


Blue-eyed matador

by FlamingoQueen



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: (usually end notes to avoid spoilers), Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Asset Bucky Barnes, Canon Divergence - Post-Avengers (2012), Crime Fighting, Deaf Clint Barton, Dehumanization, Dismemberment, Domestic Avengers, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Eventual Relationships, Everyone Has Issues, Found Family, Implied/Referenced HYDRA Trash Party, Issues Everywhere, Kinda dark to start out, Multi, Mute Bucky Barnes, Starvation, Villain Character Death, Way beyond canon-typical violence, so many issues, winterhawk - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-19
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-24 16:54:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 29
Words: 116,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21881344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlamingoQueen/pseuds/FlamingoQueen
Summary: The asset is programmed not to strike a handler. Not to struggle no matter who is doing what to it.And it complies.The asset is programmed not to shy away when technicians approach torch-first to take it apart and put it back together in the name of science, research, progress.And it complies.The asset is programmed not to object to the mouth guard, the restraints, the chair. Not to beg or plead when it is left empty and hungry in its cryo tube.And it complies.The asset is programmed not to so much as consider harming an operator, the highest of all members of the organization. And...And if the silent, liquid fury in the asset’s eyes is any indicator, the asset doesnotcomply.(Or: The one where the asset is thawed out during the Chitauri attack on New York, escapes, and goes hunting for revenge with the Avengers hot on the trail.)
Comments: 1590
Kudos: 391





	1. Prologue: With a blade and a smile

**Author's Note:**

> We're gonna go with a question mark for the chapter count. According to my outline and the way the chunks I've got written are fitting together, there should be roughly 20 chapters. But we all know how that's gonna turn out, don't we?
> 
> Story title comes from ["Blue-eyed Matador"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lCLXaqc1K4) by Voltaire.
> 
> Prologue chapter title comes from ["The Matador"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmvu8yTCLQA) by The White Buffalo.
> 
> Both are pretty applicable, and fun to listen to. If you wanted to do that sort of thing. ^_^

### Sam

**—Washington D.C. | Monday, 28 May 2012 | 10:30 p.m.—**

It happens fast. 

The thump on the roof of his car, the shining fist crashing through his windshield, the tug against his grip as the steering wheel—the steering wheel!—is yanked up and _out of his fucking car_ , leaving him grasping at both the air and his thoughts. 

Sam slams on his brakes, hears the squeal of the tires and Holly’s shriek from the passenger seat, the blaring horns of two, three, at least five drivers behind and around him. But he’s got two viable options, and those options are to get rear-ended and throw the enemy combatant into traffic, or to allow their violent and unwanted rooftop passenger free rein to possibly rip the whole dashboard out, or even—

Whoever or whatever is perched on his car does not go flying onto the highway when Sam hits the brakes, or when Sam’s rear-ended by the minivan behind him with a metallic crunch, or when Sam’s knocked into the lane to his left and then sideswiped by an SUV back across his lane and into the safety rail of the overpass in a screech of collapsing metal-on-metal.

Whoever or whatever is perched on his car just kicks out the other half of his windshield, stabs the passenger airbag and _slithers inside with them_ , a blur in black leather that grabs Holly’s seat belt with one arm for stability while the other arm flashes forward again and again and _again_ , sinking a vicious little knife into his terrified date’s chest and face while car after car joins the collision.

It happens fast, and it’s over faster.

The shadow slips back out through the windshield like it’s a bad nightmare, a twisted flashback of other grim reapers that felled other companions, a figment that was never real at all, disappearing over the railing of the overpass and into the night.

“Oh god,” he breathes, feeling the sharpness where his seat belt has dug into his ribs—maybe bruised, maybe cracked, doesn’t matter, problem for later—and already grabbing for his own knife, the one he keeps in the center console for exactly this— Well, for _emergencies_ , even if not this exact reason. His seat belt is quick work for the serrated bit near the hilt, and Sam’s free to see what he can do for Holly, though he’s betting it’s not a lot.

She’s alive, but barely, and not for very long. He can see that much in the murky yellow coming in from the street lights lining the overpass. He can hear it in her jagged gasping for water—for _hydration_ , specifically, or it would be hydration if she could get the whole word out. 

And maybe that quirk, hydration instead of water, would have been something they could laugh at if they’d had more than one date. An inside joke about staying hydrated. But they’re never having more than just the one date. Because there’s no way someone can be stabbed and slashed like this and then wait for rescue services and still be alive in the end. 

But he’s got to at least try.

“Hold on, Holly.” Sam casts around in the back seat for something, anything, to stanch the bleeding, despite knowing full well what a hopeless cause it is. That many stab wounds, that many slashes, that much blood—

His fingers finally find the red and black octopus sweater she had tossed in the back seat, and he adds it to the wad of take-out napkins he’d apparently already fetched out of the glove box and pressed against her torn chest. 

“Just hold on,” he says, voice low, as comforting as he can make it with the adrenaline pounding through him. “We’re gonna get you outta this.”

Sam doesn’t have enough hands to apply pressure to all the places it needs to go. They’re not going to get her out of this. They, plural, won’t be getting out of this at all.

It would actually have been kinder if that lunatic had slit her throat or stabbed her face deeply enough to hit her brain. But no. Whether by malicious intent or careless oversight, her killer has made sure she’ll linger. At least there’s shock. She’s a guaranteed fatality, but shock will at least keep the worst of her pain and fear at bay.

“You’re doing great,” he lies, because when the only comfort is a lie, you just gotta tell it like it ain’t. “Help is on the way. You’re going to be fine. We’ll get you through this.”

This evening has launched itself past the “dinner and a movie and food poisoning” date, the “candlelit champagne turned bonfire at the table” date, the blind date with his sister that his asshole coworkers sent him on, the “our server is my husband, since when does he work here” date, and even the previous champion of bad dates, the “oh, right, I dumped you when you went off to war and forgot about you or I’d never have swiped right, of course I had no intentions of rekindling that flame” date.

Yeah, this evening has sped right past those and settled in at the top of his list of worst first dates ever. Not top ten, not top five. _The_ top.

This will be the “my date was brutally stabbed to death by a steering-wheel-stealing maniac in leather after dark on the highway, and there was nothing I could do about it but watch, just like Riley” date.

He’s going to have nightmares for a month because of this date. Maybe longer.

Maybe he just shouldn’t be dating, yet. Maybe it’s still too soon to date and this is the universe telling him so very, very clearly.

Or maybe he should move back home, leave D.C. behind, catch a gig with the VA center in Harlem. Be near his ma. Be near Riley’s ma. God, he misses Riley.

There’s a soft, wet rattle beneath his hands, and Sam heaves a bitter sigh. She’s gone. At least she’s not suffering any more. 

He pulls his hands back and avoids looking at them while he waits for the flashing lights in the distance to arrive. They’ll have to tear up what’s left of his car to extract him and his recently departed date.

“One less thing to move home, I guess,” he says to no one in particular before closing his eyes and thinking of Riley, playing back the good times, trying to escape the bad.

### Alexander

**—Washington D.C. | Tuesday, 29 May 2012 | 12:30 a.m.—**

Alex pulls on his robe and looks at the clock on the nightstand. It’s late. Far later than he likes to get to bed, and he still has a call to make. That’s unfortunate, but not surprising, given what sort of mess he’s trying to sort out. 

A day filled with committee hearings and board meetings, an evening filled with discussions of an entirely different sort. And tomorrow, the same again. Every day, the same again, until the asset comes home like it’s been trained to do. Or until their best trackers turn up its trail, preferably before that trail runs ankle-deep with blood and entrails.

Three weeks. Three and a half weeks, to be precise, since the Chitauri attack on New York, the successful unveiling of the Avengers Initiative, and Livingsworth’s unsanctioned activation attempt. Their asset has been running free for three and a half weeks now.

Livingsworth is lucky he sat out the thaw cycle, and doubly lucky he’s still politically useful enough to keep around, or he’d find himself on Alex’s hit list, and never mind the asset’s. There’d have been time enough to thaw the asset out _after_ Nick’s Avengers failed in New York. _If_ they failed, and only if.

And they hadn’t. They’d made a mess, but they’d won. There was nothing the asset would have been needed for. It should have been left on ice. Not thawed out in a panicked rush and therefore allowed to slip its leash and obliterate the vault and everyone inside it. Livingsworth really should have been there to join the rest and get what he deserved for his foolishness.

Three and a half weeks.

It’s not the longest stretch the thing has been loose and making its blood-spattered way around the countryside, tracking down any grunt technician and medical staffer it can remember. Not the longest, not the first. Not even the first significant escape.

Before being transferred to the States in the ‘90s, the thing had gone rogue after a successful hit in Brazil unfortunately left its handler incapacitated. It had found a pocket of Nazis from the old country hiding from the trials, and it had snapped. Had gone hunting for nearly a week before being hunted in turn and brought back in line. 

But Alex’s immediate predecessor had the record for the worst escape. He’d lost the asset in Manhattan in the ‘70s for a full two months. Three entire teams of field operatives had been required to bring it _down_ , and only half a team’s worth of agents had survived to bring it _in_. The longer the asset was on the loose, the harder it became to retrieve.

Three weeks, going on four? That was tricky. Not the worst case scenario, but there’d need to be a full conditioning session on retrieval, at least two STRIKE teams, maybe a third. A simple, five-or-six-man, two-day refresher course in compliance and the futility of resistance would not do the trick. It’ll take maybe as long as a solid week to fully beat compliance back into it, teach it once more to fear its betters, no matter how low their rank.

Still, it _is_ only the lower ranks being hunted at this point. The ones they had always planned to throw away eventually, even without sacrificing them to the asset. The organization can carry those casualties for the greater good, and the weaker of their members should be pleased to make room for the strong. 

Order comes from pain _and from power_. That is the full phrase. Only those who climb high enough have any reason to know the full refrain. Pain for the few, wielded by the powerful, to establish order for the many. That is the only way to rule properly, the only way to ensure peace for all. Order comes from pain and from power. 

And if the asset is roaming free striking terror into the hearts of the weaker cogs in this machine, that is fine. The weak are food for the strong. The asset is a threshing scythe harvesting those so weak as to be unable to hide themselves. Let it grind them up in the process of running itself down, wearing itself out.

There’s no cause for _him_ to be concerned. It would actually be convenient if the asset came for him. If the asset is their feral angel of death, Alex has blood on his door posts. The asset will pass right over at worst, as it has for weeks now. But ideally, it will come in as it’s been trained to, will be drawn in by instinct and desire to please, desire to _do well_ for them, well enough to be fed. It has to be hungry out there, without a handler, without the drugs. Hallucinating, perhaps. Starving and hallucinating.

And when it comes in for food and maintenance, as it is trained to do, it will get caught up in its cage of conditioning and programmed responses, trapped again to be re-tamed.

Johnson and Livingsworth are afraid for no good reason. They are operators like he is, and only a single level beneath him in the organization’s hierarchy. Of all the men in this country, they have no reason to fear their asset. They hold its leash, just as he does, just as any of the other operators do in the other geographies. The asset can and does bite the hand that feeds it, but it _cannot_ bite the hand that holds its leash tightly.

If their grip on that leash is loose, that’s their mistake. They should have kept themselves sharp, should have been present for the thaw cycles, should have carved their own names and tallies in its flesh until they left deep, indelible marks. Should have taken lead in the conditioning sessions, given the asset a reason to remember them and fear them, to recognize their ownership as absolute.

His own grip is white-knuckle tight, and everyone in the organization who has the clearance level to know anything, knows how firm his grip is on that leash, how strong his control over the asset, how deeply he has gouged himself into the canvas of the asset’s being, flesh and mind alike. 

He will strangle the asset with its own leash if it tries to bite, if it flashes even a single tooth in his direction. And then he’ll drag it back to its proper place by the neck to learn again who it belongs to and who commands its every action, whether that action is violence or submission.

He only needs one word.

* * *

As luck would have it, the asset is waiting in the kitchen when he’s finished discussing the future of the Avengers Initiative with Nick. The house alarm hasn’t been triggered, and the sliding door to the pool is open, not broken. The lights are all still off. The gun is on the table for its operator to use or not as he sees fit. The knives are all politely sheathed.

Good. It’s following protocol. It’s ready to come quietly. As he’d suspected, all they needed was time and the thing’s conditioning would kick back in. And so here it is, behaving exactly as he knew it would.

He reaches into the fridge, holds out a carton of milk and gives it a jiggle. “Do you want some milk?” 

The light of the refrigerator illuminates the asset more clearly, picking up the blood on its leather, old and new. The asset just looks at him, face blank, eyes dead, compliant. Its muzzle is hanging loosely, hooked by one corner onto the collar strap of its uniform instead of fastened securely across its face, but that’s a minor infraction, easily attributed to the length of time it’s been off cavorting in the remains of the lower ranks.

Ultimately, all is as Alex expected. It’s returned, it’s following protocol, it’s tired. The entire spectrum of its hopes and dreams, if it had any at all, consists of being brought home and put away again. Of doing well enough that they will feed it before putting it away. Of pleasing them so much with its compliance that they will only beat it a little before locking it up in ice.

The asset is not a person to truly want things, though it is alive enough to experience hunger, thirst. If he poured milk out onto the tiles and bid the asset clean the mess, the thing would gratefully fall to the floor lapping it up. But ask it if it is hungry, or thirsty, and it knows better than to respond, even with a nod or a blink.

They will put down food and water when it has done well, and not until then. And it has returned here, meek and compliant, knowing that it has not done well at all. Just look at it, sitting there, a pathetic lump staring with those vacant eyes, waiting for whatever will come. Knowing that it has no say in the matter. 

Literally.

It’s enough to laugh about, and maybe he will laugh in a few minutes. It’s late, but maybe he’ll begin the retraining right here in this kitchen, bending the asset over the table with his fingers wound through its hair and pulling hard enough to rip a few clumps out.

The asset came to him, after all. It recognizes its master. But after nearly a month, he might as well reinforce his hold on the leash, show the asset what compliance looks like, since it’s obviously started to forget. Should only take an hour, between stripping it and washing up afterward. He’ll need another shower to scrub the asset’s filth off of himself.

Maybe Johnson will finally shut up about hiding their trail through the governments of the world when he brings the asset in like a murderous lamb, ready to be wiped clean and popped in the freezer for next time. After a few—or a few dozen—rounds of punishment to demonstrate for it the error of its ways.

Maybe Livingsworth will let his ridiculous decommissioning proposal drop off the agenda once the asset is shown to return to its pen all on its own, without needing to be hunted down by specially trained STRIKE units hoping to survive the hunt long enough to get their turn playing with the prey. 

The fool could even come to see the hypocrisy in trying to activate the asset for defense right before lobbying to have the asset decommissioned entirely. A frozen asset buried in concrete twenty feet thick and left to thaw its way into the afterlife can’t exactly provide much defense against those aliens.

Alex turns to get a glass, since he came in here for a reason and the asset will keep until he’s seen to that reason. No sense rushing when he has hours to work with. The asset will sit there until directed to do otherwise, whether he drinks a single swallow of milk or a full gallon.

But it doesn’t sit there.

It’s as silent as always—the asset only ever makes a sound partway into a wipe when the voltage gets to be too much to suffer silently, and even then it’s only capable of desperate, pained gasping. There’s not so much as a whisper of fabric giving its movement away, but the light from the other side of the room reflects just so off the refrigerator door, and Alex can see a shadow where there should be none.

He turns, and the asset is in front of him, close enough to trip over.

Unpleasant. But it’s nothing to be concerned about. It just means that he will spend _two_ hours, not one, teaching the asset obedience, reminding it where the power is always located, and where the pain is always going to go. Carving a few hashes in its flesh. Going over his name another time to guarantee the signature _takes_ in that too-quickly healing flesh.

The asset is programmed not to strike a handler while on an op or while being taught new lessons and retaught old ones. Not to so much as struggle no matter who is doing what to it, or for how long or with what tools. Not to depend on shackles to hold it down for them but to be still and receptive without prompting. 

And it complies. 

The asset is programmed not to shy away from technicians when they approach torch-first to take it apart and put it back together, when they join in the handlers’ fun, when they drag it to the limits of its endurance, of its ability to consciously withstand pain and damage, all in the name of science, research, progress. Not to resist the muzzle that clamps its jaw shut or the brace that holds its jaw open for them.

And it complies.

The asset is programmed not to object to the mouth guard for its teeth and the restraints for its limbs and the chair for wiping out the inside of its skull when a support team prepares it for the field and for storage. Not to object when its food is forced on it, or taken away from it, or presented to it as something it has not earned and will not receive. Not to beg or plead when it is left empty and hungry in its cryo tube.

And it complies. 

The asset is programmed not to so much as consider harming an operator, regardless of which organizational branch that operator is associated with, which command that operator has given, which STRIKE team that operator has handed it over to for correction and for personal—and personnel—entertainment, whether that takes place in proper, designated areas or those operators’ homes. 

And… 

And if the silent, liquid fury in the asset’s eyes is any indicator, the asset does _not_ comply.

“Sputnik,” Alex mutters, irritated by the malfunction and the need to call someone in to haul the dead weight out of his kitchen before Renata returns in the morning. So much for conducting private lessons in his home. It will have to be the sublevels of the Triskelion, the arena, the whole crowd of them, unzipped and eager for a turn.

But the asset does not drop on hearing the word. Its eyes do not glaze over and revert to a deadened stare. Its muscles do not go slack and send it tumbling, stringless, to the tiles. Its body does not fall to the floor like an insensate leatherbound ragdoll to be collected and carried off back to its concrete toy chest. 

“Sputnik,” he says, louder. So inconvenient if the asset has damaged its hearing again… He’d rather not have to yell.

The asset does not drop. He has said the deactivation code. It ought to be on the floor, eyes rolled back and face slack, limbs loose and pliable, for as many hours as they need, until they rouse it with sufficient pain or use the activation code that is Sputnik’s mirror image.

The asset does not drop; it smiles. Just a cold imitation that does not reach its eyes. It is not a person, who could smile and know what that means, who could smile and feel joy or amusement, who could _truly_ smile.

“Sputnik!” he snaps. He is going to have to yell after all. “ _Sputnik_ , you piece of shit. Sputnik!”

The asset hears him and does not drop. The asset smiles wider, colder. 

And an answering chill starts to crawl up from the base of Alex’s spine. He is an operator. One of the highest in the organization. The highest operator in the Americas. This geography’s HYDRA Supreme. Untouchable as far as the asset is concerned. A man to be pleased at any cost to itself.

But the asset does not drop. It does not drop, but smiles, wide and cold and feral. The asset twirls a blade as black as tar, light flashing along the length of it as the metal tumbles and turns between flesh fingers, a coin in an entertainer’s routine.

“S-sputnik,” Alex whispers, backing into the counter. This is wrong. This isn’t happening. This isn’t possible. He is an operator. He is untouchable.

The asset does not drop. It wraps a metal hand around the front of his robe and smiles like a glacier, sharp, jagged, perilous to cross. 

The asset grins, then snarls, bearing its teeth like a wild thing out of the forest. The asset is a rabid dog, a maddened wolf, a monster from the yellowed pages of legend. 

And Alex has somehow lost his hold on its leash.

The asset is still. 

And then—

—it—

— _moves_.

### Jenna

**—Washington D.C. | Tuesday, 29 May 2012 | 2:45 a.m.—**

Jenna pulls up to the car wash, card at the ready, and thanks her lucky stars that these things are open 24x7. Last time she lets Liam borrow her truck. Absolutely the last time, and that boy can whine all he likes about it. She’s got client meetings tomorrow for crying out loud. No one drives up to a client meeting in a truck that’s seen the underbelly of a mudslide. 

Huh, she thinks, staring at the panel where she’d ideally swipe her card and order up the super-deluxe. That’s odd, really. The panel is just hanging open like someone came by to do some maintenance and forgot to close up shop afterward.

It’s probably one of those cyber people, gangsters with the card readers and malverware viruses, maybe the ones named after condoms. She should just put it in reverse and go find another car wash—city’s full of them—but she sticks around because something seems not-right in an interesting sort of way.

The car wash is going strong.

The panel’s open like it should be out of order, but it’s running. There’s so many suds and so much mist that she can’t make out the car itself, and her headlights actually make it worse. Must be one of those small imports. Probably gets great gas mileage. But how’d they get the car wash to run with the panel busted?

The wash cycle runs down, and as the mist clears and the green lights flash to tell that zippy little import to pull forward and inch past the blowers, she sees that it is not a car at all in there. 

It’s a man.

There’s a man in the car wash.

There’s still enough mist from the sprayers to obscure fine detail, but that is definitely human, definitely big enough to be a man—she pities the woman with shoulders that broad or thighs that thick—wearing some sort of bondage gear, and probably not a werewolf. It’s not anywhere near a full moon, and werewolves don’t exist anyway. Not really.

She’s still staring when the man stoops down to pick up a bag—homeless man? backpacker? hitchhiker? student adventurer? member of a very odd underground kink ring?—slings it over a shoulder, puts something on his face, and stalks back through the car wash toward her. 

Oh shit. She’s in park. What the fuck is she still even doing here? Does she have no sense of self-preservation? Only idiots linger at an abandoned, hijacked car wash at practically three in the morning in the city. This is how slasher films start. She’s the opening scene, the hor d’oeuvre for Freddy fucking Krueger. They will find _parts_ of her tomorrow.

But he acts like she’s not there. He does something with the fuses or the wires or the whatever is inside the panel, shuts it with what she’s sure would be an audible clank if she was also stupid enough to have her windows rolled down, and then runs a finger down all the buttons for selecting what kind of wash you want. 

He has a really reflective gray glove, but only on the one hand. Shiny like metal is shiny. Wow.

Then he looks at her, and his eyes are so blue above the muzzle that she almost forgets everything else. He pushes the bottom button, the most expensive option with twice the bells and whistles, and almost none of it actually worth the money.

The green light flashes on again, and the speaker cheerfully tells her to make sure her windows are up and her doors closed, and to slowly pull her vehicle forward. 

Jenna glances forward to see if she should believe her eyes and ears, and when she looks back at the man—car wash fairy? weirdest maintenance man ever? off-season bondage werewolf?—he is gone.

The smart thing to do is to put it in reverse, back out, go somewhere safe, and call the cops. But mystery hobo car wash fairy bought her a really nice car wash—stole it for her?—and her truck is muddy AF. 

She shrugs and slowly pulls forward.


	2. Natasha | Flaming star, don’t shine on me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from “Flaming Star” by Elvis Presley, which you can listen to here: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57h7Kk6t85E>
> 
> Content warnings are in the end notes if you're interested.
> 
> (Also, confession time. I have not watched and don't plan to watch Endgame. But I'm going borrow some (not all) of the time heist events for this fic. Specifically, Loki _did_ escape with the Tesseract and Tony _did_ have his heart attack. There _are_ some HYDRA agents who believe Steve is on their side, but HYDRA is a backstabby sort of organization, so the "knowledge" isn't widespread. If my "what actually happened in the time heist" details are wrong, I apologize up front. Imma try to get it right, but I'll probably get some of it wrong--and I might be intentionally dropping some of it if it doesn't fit my plans, haha! Please be kind. ^_^)

**—New York City | Tuesday, 29 May 2012 | 3:30 p.m.—**

Natasha hides it well—of course—but she can’t help but be on alert when Nick calls them all into one of the meeting rooms in Stark Tower, currently being renovated into Avengers Tower. It would be one thing if Nick was on conference call. Sharing a city is no reason to also share a room, if there’s a way around it.

Not to say that Nick is a recluse. But he has trust issues. He wears them on his eyepatch instead of his sleeve, but they are there to be read by anyone who cares to look. She’s still half impressed he put himself on that helicarrier with the rest of them.

But here he is, in the flesh, and with Maria Hill to one side, looking grimmer than her usual. 

All signs point to disaster. What is left to be seen is whether that disaster consists of extraterrestrial revenge, delayed domestic nuclear missile defense, a Loki sighting, terrorists at home or abroad, public opinion running toward mob mentality… More options than she likes. 

And too soon. It hasn’t even been a month since the Chitauri attacked, and they are already needed? Needed badly enough that Nick came out himself instead of sending in Phil’s stand-in, whoever that ended up being. Needed badly enough to drop their search for Thor’s eel of a brother, perhaps.

No, she doesn’t like it one bit. She’s already saved the world, erased another couple of red marks from her ledger. Now is the time to let things settle, to find this persona’s normal, to establish herself with this team, try to send down roots for the first time since Budapest, for the first time with a team and not merely a partner.

Now is not the time to launch into the next disaster. Stark’s not slept a full night yet after his brief trip to space and his near-kiss experience with the Hulk, to say nothing of his heart attack afterward. Rogers isn’t much better, and spends most nights beating a heavy bag into submission, just as he did before Nick first called him to join them. Clint… 

She sighs. 

She knows Clint inside and out. And right now, Clint is not doing well. He laughs it off, but he’s fooling no one, least of all her. He sleeps worse than Stark, and she’s caught him checking his eyes in the window reflections on multiple occasions, searching for a hint of Tesseract blue and still unable to relax once he’s found nothing of the sort, because Loki is a master of illusion, and is loose.

Probably the best adjusted of them all—somehow—Banner has taken off to the unknown, burying himself in some jungle or other after setting up a passive scanning system to hunt for the missing Tesseract, and possibly the devious Asgardian who absconded with it. They can find him if they need to, but there’s no sense in putting him in a situation as stressful as New York. Not with the Tower still under construction and everyone still reeling a little, or a lot.

The door slides open to let Clint amble in, obviously fresh from the range in tattered jeans and a baggy purple sweatshirt with his quiver slung casually over a shoulder, just a college bookbag slouch that does not hide the way his knuckles pale around the strap.

They’re not ready for this. Whatever this is.

But they weren’t ready for Loki and the Chitauri, were they, and they won. Somehow. Some _what_. Hard to say “we won” when enemy number one used McGuffin number one to avoid facing justice and is still at large being chased across the universe by his brother where none of them can follow.

Nick stands up the moment Clint’s butt hits a chair seat, and places his hands behind his back in a power pose that would hide his tension from anyone but her. What has him so off-balance?

“Thanks for joining us, Barton,” he says, giving his voice a sarcastic lilt that is nevertheless business enough to prevent any return banter. “You might be wondering why you’re here. And if you’re clever, you’re wondering why _I’m_ here.”

Stark raises his hand. “I’m not wondering that. Is anyone wondering that? No? See, we’re not wondering that at all, and we’re all pretty clever here. Some of us—me—more than others. So why don’t you skip the intro and get us to the point.”

Rogers continues to silently lean back in his chair with his arms folded. It’s not agreement with Stark, but it’s not disagreement, either. A passive alliance against the man who unapologetically manipulated them with exaggerated claims of a friend’s death.

The boys are clearly still upset about Phil being used like a wilted carrot to lead them on. Looks like the trust issues are spreading like wildfire this year.

Nick doesn’t let it phase him in the slightest. “There’s someone out there gunning for S.H.I.E.L.D.,” he says, pausing to lend gravity to his words but unintentionally ceding the floor.

“Sounds like a S.H.I.E.L.D. problem,” Stark mutters into his green smoothie. “Last I checked, the A was the last letter standing, not S. JARVIS, be a dear and remind Director Nicholas J. which letter is out there.”

“The letter A is still attached to the building, Sir.” The AI sounds long-suffering, if such a thing were possible.

“We’ve got nothing,” Nick says, pressing ahead without allowing the distraction. “Before last night, there had been fifteen S.H.I.E.L.D. victims: two mechanics, four sys admins, eight operatives and a janitor. The weapon of choice and the amount of force it’s been used with indicate this is not a _regular_ human being we’re dealing with.”

Clint pales, but remains silent as he exchanges a look with Hill and gets no answers from her grim expression.

Rogers, though, sits forward at that, a little frown on his face. “What do you mean ‘not a regular human being?’”

“More importantly,” Stark adds, “what happened last night?” He points at Hill as she shifts from one stance to another. “I saw that. Spill.”

And there’s a twitch, that tiniest bit of tension, maybe a tightening of Nick’s jaw. Natasha doubts anyone else would see it. She narrows her eyes. Something doesn’t add up. 

Stark and Rogers are the two Nick needs to win over, and he _has_ them now, nearly in the bag if not already there. Stark’s his own drummer, but he’s hearing a tune that intrigues him. Rogers is more loose canon than he or history let on, but he’s smelling a problem, and righting wrongs is too great a lure to turn away from. 

So. She and Clint are still technically S.H.I.E.L.D.—STRIKE Delta, and unrelieved of their posts. They’ll fall in line regardless of the briefing. And the two Nick needs to coax on board have already checked their luggage.

Which means Nick _should_ be falling back into a relaxed confidence, preparing to wrap things up with the answers to those questions and a “suggested” course of action. But he gets tenser. 

Natasha catches Clint’s eyes, and sees the same unease on his face for a moment before he tucks it away into feigned boredom.

“Among other things, Secretary of Defense Alexander Pierce was murdered last night after he and I had a long chat about where this team was headed moving forward.” Nick scowls. “It was… an unusual murder.”

“Unusual how?” Clint pointedly devotes his attention to cleaning under his fingernails with an arrowhead: I’m uninterested, but try to change that. “Where’d they find him?”

Nick’s expression is mostly angry, with just a touch of wry. “Which piece?”

Clint looks up at that, pretense dropped. “What?”

Stark whistles low and under his breath.

Natasha maintains her composure with the practice of many years, but… it’s a blow. She can well understand the reactions. Pierce? That high up, with that kind of security and that much accumulated goodwill? It was rare for anyone high up in the ranks to be universally respected, but Pierce came close.

So toss aside the personal angle, take a close look at the timing, and what’s left? Did the assassin target him for information on the Avengers Initiative? Did the assassin _overhear_ information? Has there been a breach?

“Doesn’t sound like you think Loki’s behind it. So what’s this weapon,” Rogers asks grimly, “and what makes you think the killer isn’t human?”

“Not ‘isn’t human,’ Cap, but ‘isn’t a regular human,’” Nick says. “Forensics teams say the killer used a knife to dismember him, and only a knife. But he could also punch through a safe. Not just dent it, or bust the locking mechanism. Punch through the side, though there _was_ a handprint half an inch deep in the metal. Sound like something any old human could do?”

“Okay. I’m impressed. Disturbed, but impressed.” Stark snaps his fingers. “Count me in. I want to see what sort of robot we’re looking for. Could be useful. Dismantle it for parts, maybe. See if there’s some nice design work. Find the builder. Pick his brain. Or her brain. Evil’s equal opportunity these days.”

Rogers shakes his head. “Why would a robot use a knife? And not a—” he shrugs “—laser beam, or something.”

“This isn’t a robot,” Nick says.

And then he puts them up on the screen, pictures taken at the scene, of the… pieces… of the body. He clicks through them like it wasn’t his close friend that got hacked apart. Like he hadn’t spoken on the phone with Pierce that very night, possibly mere minutes before… _this_ … happened.

-click-

A bloated, gray chunk of leg bobbing against the side of the pool, blood splashed against the tiles but washed away at the water’s edge, the skin peeled down from knee to ankle to reveal the muscles and tendons of the calf, fanning out like a deconstructed turkey drumstick. 

-click-

An arm sticking like a broken stem out of a wide-necked vase in the foyer, first rising up out of the vase and then bending down at the elbow so that the fingerless hand rests against the edge of the console table. Spilled flowers and blood-speckled, nailless fingers strewn on the floor beneath it, each finger sliced lengthwise to the bone. A rain of pulled fingernails over the top.

-click-

The better part of a torso, rib cage and up, hanging from a crooked ceiling fan by the belt of a bathrobe, its entrails spilled out in gray loops. Head lolling to one side, eyes missing, mouth wide open. Wide open, and _empty_. A wide ring of blood splattered around the living room floor and walls as the body had spun around before someone found it and flipped the switch to “off.”

-click- 

A glass on the kitchen table surrounded by bloody teeth like a handful of gravel, with just a bit of pinkish milk in the bottom of the glass. A bit of milk… and a _tongue_ , half-floating and half-pressed to the side of the glass, otherwise submerged. The carton to the side of it with— 

Oh god. 

No.

-click-

A whole leg with the flayed pelvis and genitals still attached to it, resting on the duvet in the bedroom, the pattern of blood on the wall above the headboard indicating it was thrown, hard, and then left where it rebounded.

“Wait,” she croaks, forcing the sound from her throat. “Go back. Go back, _please_.”

-click-

Glass. Teeth. Kitchen table. Milk and tongue. Carton. Carton with red smear, shaped like… 

She swallows, hard. _It’s him_. She knows that sign. She has only ever seen it the one time before, in Odessa, and even then it was a photograph, like this. Taken after the fact, shown to her in the hospital as she recovered, because she’d asked, because she’d _demanded_ , because she’d had to _know_. 

A star etched into the back of her scientist’s hand. 

Her scientist, shot right through her gut, a blind headshot that left behind no head at all, but only bits of skull and a spray of gray matter across the road and the side of the car.

“Nat?” Rogers asks.

Natasha tears her eyes away from the milk carton with its red… maybe she’s seeing things. 

She never sees things. Superstition and irrational fear and wishful thinking got beaten out of her long ago, when she was forged in the shadowy halls of the Red Room. Only one fear remains, and it’s not irrational at all.

He _will_ come for you if you step out of line.

He _will_ come for you if you refuse to perform at your very best. 

He _will_ come for you if you try to leave. 

They will send him out, and _he will come for you_. 

A ghost story that killed enough of them to be true. A story they all heard, a story they all believed, a story that was as uncontested as sunrise and sunset, as inevitable as the tides, as inescapable as gravity. Get off the planet, and _maybe_ he couldn’t find you. Maybe.

“What—” She swallows again, nods at the screen, pulls her terror back inside and buries it deep. She is a swan on the lake. Grace and certainty. The frantic paddling hidden beneath the surface. “What does that look like to you? On the side of the milk carton.” 

The team leans in, and JARVIS blows the image up for a better look. 

Natasha wants to be sick, seeing the star larger than life, redder than death. She is very carefully _not_ sick.

She can see Clint out of the corner of her eye, trying to catch her attention and exchange a knowing look, lend silent support, but she can’t. She can’t look at him, can’t see the knowledge deep in her gut confirmed by his concern and recognition. Can’t risk the blown cover and let them all see her fear.

She’s told him her nightmares. He knows what she sees in the pattern on the carton. _Who_ she sees. Or maybe _what_ is more appropriate after all. Whether Clint is merely trying to be sympathetic or thinks the star and the one who calls with that card are actually there, she can’t say for sure. But either would be a confirmation, and maybe she is wrong. 

Maybe the others won’t see it if she doesn’t put it there for them to see. Maybe she’s seeing things.

Rogers squints, not to see better, but just a habit she’s noticed he still has, probably from before the serum. Part of her wonders if he’s aware of it. The rest of her shakes off the distraction. None of them can afford distraction now, though only she knows it.

“A star?” he asks, and her stomach heaves inside her. “A finger-painted star.” He looks at Nick. “Can they pull prints from that?”

So hopeful, so earnest, so naive, but it’s hardly his fault. He means well. And while the regular street authorities probably couldn’t pull a print from that sort of thing, despite what the TV shows claim, it’s a valid enough question to ask when you have all the might and scientific know-how of S.H.I.E.L.D. behind you.

But no one can pull prints when the hand has none. And this ghost signs in blood with metal.

“No,” she answers for Nick.

Stark raises his eyebrow and takes it like the challenge she knew he would. “JARVIS, get us the goods.”

“There won’t be prints,” she says woodenly. “Nothing useful, anyway. Not anywhere. He’s too good.”

He’s too good, or too secret, or too much a ghost, and it doesn’t matter how or why the evidence he leaves will prove useless. What matters is that he has _come_. Come for her, possibly—she defected a while ago, so he’s a long time coming. Come for S.H.I.E.L.D., possibly—since they took her in. Maybe it can be Thor’s turn to shelter her next after all of S.H.I.E.L.D. is slaughtered. She’s always loved to travel. See the sights. 

Inescapable as gravity. Asgard might be safe, if it comes down to that.

Stark scoffs. “Pssh. Come on.” He gestures at the screen. “That much of a mess, and no prints? Nothing useful? What is he, a ghost?”

“Yes.”

The smoothly cultured tones of the AI sound from everywhere and nowhere: “I have analyzed the available data, Sir, and it appears Agent Romanoff is partially correct. There is an abundance of biometric evidence on the scene, but only that of Secretary Pierce resides in any databases I can access.”

And she’d known it before hearing that. She’d known it as soon as she saw the sign on the carton, the little red star with its threat and its promise: _I am coming. I am coming for_ you _. I’ve already been_ here _, and_ there _is next, wherever you are hiding_. But hearing JARVIS confirm it sends an entire childhood full of terror running down her back. He’s a ghost, he’s untraceable, he’s bleeding smoke, and she’s next.

“Romanoff,” Nick barks at her, shaking her from her thoughts. “What do you know. Fill us in. Who is this guy?”

She looks from one of them to the next, down the line. Nick, Hill, Stark, Clint, Rogers. Aside from Clint, they don’t know. They can’t know. And if the nightmare that’s gunning for S.H.I.E.L.D. is who she thinks it is, they will _have_ to know.

“It’s the Winter Soldier.”

* * *

“So you’re saying Casper’s a real ghost,” Stark says with a casual wave. “Not just a monster lurking under the Red Room beds and tucked into conspiracy theorists’ Christmas stockings.”

Stark gives his green smoothie a swirl and switches which foot is crossed over the other on the briefing table. His air of nonchalance projects his unease clearly to her eyes. Maybe it fools other people. Maybe it just fools himself.

It hadn’t seemed to fool Nick, in any case. He and Hill hadn’t stayed long after her pronouncement, despite an objection from Rogers that Nick was a likely target and should remain in New York. More people to brief, more pieces to set in motion, more plans to iron out. And Nick’s got a lot more security than Pierce ever did, most of it invisible to a trusting eye like Rogers’s.

“Oh, he’s real.” Natasha crosses her arms over her chest, sending a vaguely argumentative signal that should put Stark a bit more at ease. The man thrives on confrontation. “I knew people he came for, and I’ve seen him. Once.” 

Part of him, maybe. And what he’d left behind sprayed all over the gravel shoulder.

She still sometimes dreams of him, of the too-faint, barely-there, maybe-imagined crunch of his boots on gravel, the silent sound of death slowly and steadily making its way closer and closer toward her on the gritty roadside. Dreams of the glint and flash of late afternoon sun off curved and segmented metal, brighter than it should be in the dying light as she struggled to move or even just keep her eyes open against the blood loss.

“It was Odessa. The nuclear physicist I lost.” Natasha gives her side a surreptitious pat, feeling the twisted scar under the fabric of her top. Another thing only Clint knows about. “He didn’t come for me. But I was in his way. He took his headshot, took it right through me. Left me on the side of the road.”

Rogers frowns. “You lived, though. If he’s this shadowy enforcer, then how? Why’d he leave you alive?”

A question she’d asked herself for months after that botched job and still doesn’t have a truly satisfactory answer to years later. She was one of the Red Room’s best. Maybe _the_ best. If she could defect and live, surely that would, and did, send the wrong message. But on that road out of Odessa, he’d had her, and he’d _left_ her.

She shakes her head. “I don’t know,” she says. “Best I can tell, I wasn’t on the list. He…” And it _is_ odd, still. So odd. “He never did come for me, when I defected. They never sent him. Odessa was a chance encounter, I think.”

He’d come for others; she’d heard of her rebel sisters slaughtered in the shadows in the months and years after she defected and they tried to follow, one-by-one. He’d come for them, but not her. Not until now. If that’s what he’s here for. It might not be. Now that she’s had some time to process the shock of seeing that sign, the problem seems like one she can solve… with these teammates.

“The star is his sign. We all had one. We’d leave it somewhere it would be seen, but only by the right eyes.” It was how to take credit for the hit, how to let your handler know you’d done what was required when they came to check the scene afterward. Hers was an hourglass. His is a star.

“Milk carton’s kinda high profile, for ‘only the right eyes,’” Stark mutters, tracing little stars on the table from the condensation on his glass. “I mean, whole thing’s kinda high profile. Real mess. Doesn’t seem like the kind of thing a top secret terrorist cell’s shadow enforcer is going to be getting up to.”

Rogers rubs a thumb along his jawline, eyes narrowed in thought. “Maybe it’s a personal thing.”

Rogers is not the person she’d expect that thought to come from, but there it is. Captain Wholesome is imagining a personal vendetta that would leave a man in no fewer than a dozen pieces scattered across his home. Maybe the pigs will fly tomorrow.

“The Winter Soldier doesn’t have grudges. He has orders.”

Rogers shrugs. “Well, if he’s a person and not just a made up threat, then it stands to reason he could hold a grudge. People do that sort of thing.”

It’s easier not to think of the Winter Soldier as a person underneath the mask and the blood-smeared leather, behind the scope with his finger on the trigger. It’s easier to think of him as a machine, because with a machine it’s not personal. 

And a machine can be thrown off course by some decent hacking and that’s that until someone comes to repair it… but a person with enough dedication will keep coming, no matter what you put in their way.

“Great,” Stark says. “So we’ve got a not-so-imaginary murder poltergeist going after S.H.I.E.L.D. and all we know is that he likes stars.”

Natasha shakes her head. “We know more than that. We know he won’t stop. We know he’s fast, and strong, and has a metal arm. We know he’s taking orders from someone, probably in Russia. The Red Room fell, but Department X is still viable. And…”

She hesitates. They need to know, but they also need to believe. And if the last fact she adds to the pile collapses it all like a house of cards in a breeze, then telling them is worse than not, because in doubting _that_ fact, they could doubt it _all_. 

But they have to _know_. They have to have all the details. They’re her team. Her family, even if it’s still a touch dysfunctional by sappy movie standards. And if the Winter Soldier is coming for S.H.I.E.L.D., is maybe coming for _her_ , then he will be coming for them, too. Now, later, eventually.

Clint nods at her from across the table, his eyes saying it all: Tell them. Say it. I’ve got your back.

“Nat?” Rogers lays a hand on the back of hers, lightly.

She takes a breath and lets it out. “And we know he’s been around since the late ‘40s.”

Stark sits upright, the front two legs of his chair thumping down. “No way. It’s got to be more than one guy. Capsicle’s only spry because he took a seventy-year ice nap.”

Natasha shakes her head. “That’s part of the story, no matter who’s telling it. He’s timeless. Ageless. Like a golem made from clay and set on a path.”

There’s a thoughtful sound to her right and she turns toward Rogers. The others follow suit, and after a moment, he seems to realize this.

“Oh.” He shrugs. “It’s just.” 

Rogers brings his hands together, and maybe he’d rather not share, but he continues anyway. “Project Rebirth was supposed to be more than just me. There was an earlier serum Schmidt had used. And Zola’s experiments…” His mouth tightens. “Could be there was some other party playing God in the ‘40s. It was a crowded playing field.”

Stark sighs. “Well, that’s better, then. Captain Old-timer can help us hunt down Jigsaw’s vintage murder puppet.”

Rogers narrows his eyes in wary curiosity. 

Natasha returns the arm-pat from earlier. “You don’t need to understand that reference, Rogers.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings:
> 
> There is a somewhat grisly slideshow (described, not drawn) detailing some of what must have happened to Pierce. It's left to your imagination which things happened first, and therefore how long Pierce was alive for all of that.


	3. Interlude | All the roads, they are one now (each choice is the same)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from “[Black Eyes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HcESERdGG4)” by Radical Face.
> 
> Additional warning in the end notes if you are interested in those.

**—Washington, D.C. | Wednesday, 30 May 2012 | 4:30 a.m.—**

It drops back to the concrete slab without a sound. One hand clutches the white-fuzz-orange-block in its torn plastic sleeve—Colby, the sleeve says. The other hand holds a thin plastic bag of dented-soft-green-logs—squash, it knows; zucchini. Or—cucumber, maybe.

They would tell it what was in the bag, if they were here. They would say, this is cheese. You did well. You get to eat it. This is— is— This is— Cucumber-or-zucchini, they would say. You did well. You get to eat it.

And maybe they would take the cheese and the zucchini-cucumber away again and laugh. Or maybe they would try to, but it would be fast enough to bite and swallow, to bolt the reward down before they could steal it. And maybe they would let that stand, or maybe they would force it to return the reward—boots to the stomach, white electric pain to the stomach, one and the other and the one and the other until the reward is lost. 

You did not do well, after all, they would say. You do not get to keep the reward. You do not get to eat. Strip it and start over. Which team is next. Dicks out, boys.

But they are not here. None of them are here, and it _is_ here and it has done well. The blood on the sleeve and the blood on the boots and the blood inside the hand and under the fingernails—the blood does not lie. It says, you did well. You get to eat this.

And no one is here to take the cheese and the cucumber-zucchini away, and it has done well.

No one has heard. No one has seen. It struck hard and fast, silent and final. The man who drives the transport vehicle has no fingers to hold the wheel, no hands with palms to honk the horn or knuckles to strike the face.

There is screaming. A woman. Close but not too close. Yelling. A man. Close but not too close.

The man who _used to drive_ the transport vehicle has no hands at all, and has no cheeks or lips or tongue to whistle the tunes that come out of the dashboard and speakers. He has no ears to put the hard little white things into. He has no feet to step on the pedals with, the accelerator, the brakes, the clutch. He has no feet to step on the asset with, or to kick it.

There is the sound of leather connecting with skin, and of a body being thrown against a wall. Close… and too close, now. Too familiar. It knows those sounds. That is unacceptable. It will not go back, and it will not let another be taken back in its place.

There is no going back.

It will not, will not, will _not—_

go— 

It will not go back.

It sets the reward on the concrete behind the metal box, easy to pick up after, but not so easy to spot and steal. It did well. It earned the reward. No one will take the reward away. The ones who would are dead. Some of them. Not enough of them. Someday all of them.

There is the window with the light coming through the curtains, thin little strips from the edges. It is the only light on this side of the motel, the only room that is occupied.

On the other side of the motel, there is a room that was occupied by a transport vehicle driver, and that is now occupied by a pile of meat. There are three other occupied rooms on the other side of the motel, still occupied by living people. 

And there is this room, on this side of the motel, occupied by a man who sounds like anger and a woman who sounds like fear, and soon to be occupied by a woman who does not need to be afraid and a pile of meat.

It is a good sort of night for fashioning piles of meat out of people.

The window is on the upstairs level, but the closest-quickest-best way in is to ignore the stairs and the walkway with the railing and the out-of-the-way waste of time. It coils, crouching low, the legs wound tight, and then pushes off. Easy to the railing, easy over the railing, easy through the window, the elbow striking the glass and the body following after.

Roll over the A/C unit under the window, come up from the crouch, observe the scene, let the killing face keep the smile from the lips. Only true targets can see the smile.

Man with arm drawn back, holding belt, other hand fisted, mouth open and angry, turning to see what has happened. Woman with arms over head and face, huddled on floor, pleading cut short. Child hiding in little closet nook where, on the other side of the motel, the transport driver makes his mess into the carpet.

Bathroom light off, bed unmade, woman holding fabric to bare chest, man with fly open, bottles on table, most empty. Shitty motel carpet, heavily stained but with room for a few more spots: good. It’s going to make a mess, and the mess will have somewhere to go.

The man’s anger is still anger… until it isn’t. His wordless shout still says, oh-ho, I’ll hurt you… until it says, oh-no, you’ll hurt me, instead. There is the moment of change, the shift, the flicker-flash of realization in the eyes—the eyes of every target, every one of them, every time—that there is something worse out there, something monstrous, and that it has come for them.

Knife to inner forearm because the man is stupid enough to raise his arm to strike it with the belt when he is not a handler-operator-trainer-technician and has no right to strike it. Shallow slice to start, then deeper into elbow hinge, pop the joint from inside, twist the knife, shred the tissue, release the tendon, hear the gristle-grind and the snap and the scream.

The man screams his terror and his pain, screams with his mouth and with his eyes, as though he is not a pustulant sac of evil in this world in need of draining killing slicing-open—

—open _wide_ , wider, _wider_ , so wide—

—spilling-out.

The woman screams her terror and her terror and her _terror_ , louder than before, as though it is here for her as well when she is innocent. As though it would hurt her, when it would never.

Maintain momentum, draw the knee high and close, lean in while extending the foot, place boot into midgut. Precise. Thump of man into drywall, grunt of air rushing out of lungs. Follow through, the beautiful part, the two steps, three, the metal fingers hauling the man upright out of the wall. 

The woman wailing into thin-flat-block—phone—little handheld thing, everyone has one. They point them and hold them up and try to collect footage of it, but cameras do not work without film. It cannot be photographed in this new way when the metal arm is in sight, when the star is showing. Can only be photographed the old way. No one uses the old way anymore.

The woman does not even try. She is not thinking. She is fearing.

Knife to ribs, a clean slick slide of the fang into the flesh, don’t catch on bone, don’t go too deep, open up the dam and release the blood stored inside the reservoir. Careful, careful, not the heart, but spleen is acceptable. Spleens will flood the river with the stored up blood, but hearts will destroy it all, will crumble the banks, too soon.

Sometimes killing should be slow. Lessons should be taught. There is order in pain.

Order in— There is— Order— 

In—

The woman with the phone is the only sound now, the only sound that isn’t wet gasping and frothy spittle rattling in the man’s throat. Her terror and her terror and her terror is horrible, but she cannot know better, cannot know she is not next, cannot know what it is here for, has come for, has come to accomplish.

She does not know the mission objective. 

The mission is the most important thing. The mission is everything. The mission gives life.

But there is no time to reassure her. Communication with civilians is not within protocol. It could communicate with her—it is free, free from protocol, free from handlers-operators-trainers-technicians, free from the ice and the white electric fire, free from the men and women who cut it and carve it up, free from the ones who put the hot metal on the skin and push into it and take their turns.

It has will now.

But first it has a mission, has a purpose, has a goal, has a task. The man must die. And there is still breath in the lungs, blood in the veins, life in the eyes. And the cyst must be drained, must be emptied, must be cleaned out, scoured, sliced open, _drained_. It will do well. It is hungry, and it will deserve the reward.

Twist knife and withdraw, bite again. Drag down through the eyes—one eye, other eye—cut apart the cheeks—lip to ear, other lip to other ear—metal fang stabbing and slicing and pulling and tearing. Bite and tear and rip, metal teeth into soft flesh into fragile skin into evil, sinking in and pulling out again, again, again, black and slick with red.

Fabric is meaningless to metal teeth and claws. Blue-denim-jeans. White-cotton-t-shirt. Meaningless. Slash and tear and rip, and what is fabric anymore? Not a shield, but so many soft things to be curled up in after a hunt. Soft things to hide in, to enjoy, to rub against the cheek… but soft things cannot defend.

There is no more time left to ensure that evil is purged the slow way. The woman is calling, has called, is staying on the line, is waiting while help arrives. Is staying calm, ma’am, except that she is screaming still and cannot say the words that will tell others where the motel is located. 

The child is silent: small and frozen, a tiny statue of a child. Staying hidden in the little nook near the bathroom. Good choice. The children are the smartest ones. They know where to be safe, how to be small.

It will make the rest quick. Well. Quicker. Its hunts are always quick. It’s the killing that is sometimes slow.

It has will and it has pride: It is _quick_. And thorough. Both in turn.

Upstroke, angled from right hip to base of throat. Soft pale skin and flesh. Downstroke, throat to left hip. Red waterfall from the neck. Upstroke, left hip to right nipple. Pull at intestines along the way, turn the knife to pull-not-slice. Slash across, nipple to nipple. Lightly through curling hair, across the curve of ribs. Downstroke, nipple to right hip. Make it deep, make it _cut_ , make it bite, make it _count_.

It was here. It did its job. It accomplished its mission objectives. It did well. The star will tell them. It did well. The star is proof. It did _so_ well.

The evil has been cleaned out of the room-home-motel, the woman and the child will be safe now, no one will take them back, make them go back, no going back, it has done well, it has done well and so it can eat.

It lets the body slip from the fingers, wipes the fang on the sleeve—it was here, here are the marks, here are the smears, here is the proof written red on the leather—looks at the child, the woman. Its job is done. It did well. The work was quick and sweet. The body wears the star.

But they will take the body away. 

They will remove the mark and then no one will _know!_

It was here. 

_But no one will know it!_

It drops to a crouch over the body, dips the finger—metal to pooling red—and scrawls the mark on the wall, far enough away to stand out from the rest.

There.

The woman is safe now—with her phone and her emergency services. The child is safe now—with its wisdom and its closet. The man is safe now—all his evil cut out of him and seeping into the carpet.

It nods at the woman and goes back out the window. Back down to the street. Back into the shadows of the alley. 

Back to the reward.

It did well. So well. It has earned the cheese and the cucumber-zucchini and… it has earned _more_. It has. It accomplished the mission objectives, the first one and the new one. Two mission objectives. It exercised tactical flexibility. It saw a thing that was wrong and made it right.

It has earned this reward and also another one. There is a better place it knows. It will go there and claim the second reward that is waiting for it.

And… it has earned this first reward _now_. Without waiting. It pulls off the lower half of the killing face, hooks it onto the harness where it belongs when there is no killing to do and no hiding. And no one to make it starve.

There are no handlers-operators-trainers-technicians here. No one to tell it that it must keep the killing face on, the hungry face, the face that hides the other face underneath. No one to make it, no one to thread the leather through the edges and pull and pull and _pull_ the strap tight so that it cuts into the skin and pulls the hair and forces the teeth to clench so that there is room for the chin underneath.

It can put the killing face over the other face so that it can do the killing, and it can take the killing face off so that there is no hungry face at all. No leather straps through the edges, no pulling, no cutting into the other face. 

Easy on. Easy off. 

_At will._

It has will now. It stole will from the operator. Stole it. Tore it out of the operator’s mouth, knocked it out of the operator’s gums, all the little ivory pebble pieces of it, gouged it out of the operator’s eye sockets. It has will.

It can _will_ the killing face on, and it can _will_ the killing face off. 

And so the killing face comes loose, comes off, and the other face can claim the reward.

The cheese is already gone when it approaches the food store with the metal box that has the leavings that are only a day old or a little stale or slightly misshapen. It drops the zucchini-cucumber, exchanges that bag for a plastic cage full of softening strawberries, squishy little gemstones that are sweet and half-liquid in the mouth and leave the fingers glistening. 

There is a plump bit of plastic-wrapped chicken, still pink-peach and tender, with a little yellowed fat and skin hanging onto the edges—clumping fat and pock-marked skin, gray and yellow and white—and the meat, so helpless against the teeth the way beef is not, so yielding and so slimy-cold from the pad between meat and styrofoam. It slips down the throat, slides safely away where it cannot be stolen.

There is bread, hard and spotted with green and blue and white. It can take this, can keep it for later. It will feed the little creatures that share the den with it. The bread will not make the soft things wet. 

The apples, crispy-sweet and mushy-brown by turns, and the crunchy-yellow corn with the soft outer teeth that pop wet and sweet in the mouth and the cores that are too hard to eat here and too wet to be among the soft things—those rewards must be claimed here, now. 

And there—! Tucked under a box of things that are hard and flat and orange-brown, and that rattle in their card-stock prison, and that are called cheese crackers— A broken melon the ants have not yet discovered, with the slushy-sweet orange flesh and rough, veined-leather hide, the seeds like crunchy fingernails hanging on by slick threads. 

A treasure.

It has done so, _so_ well.

* * *

The sun is stirring when it makes it back to the den, but not yet rising. The very tops of the buildings are lined in faintly lighter sky-black, a tinge of blue, a hint of daylight, the stars just a little fainter against their backdrop. Some of the buildings have eyes already, rectangles of light with little silhouetted irises moving about inside the yellow sclera.

It’s the time for things that belong in the night to tuck themselves away.

And it belongs in the night right now. Belongs in the nest with the soft things and the hungry little creatures it shares this den with. They belong here, too, in the night.

And inside the den, nest, lair, it is always night. There is no startling flash of brightness to send the little creatures running to corners or into cracks or under layers of soft things gathered from unattended laundromats. Inside, it is dark and dark and warm and dark. Always night.

It is still dripping a little, from the garden hose and the midnight sprinklers on their timers, so easily disconnected to wash off the leather and the killing face and the hair and all the rest of it underneath. So easily put back together again, and none the wiser. 

The people in their houses and their apartments and their parks with their ponds and fountains, their lawns and their swimming pools, they don’t look at the night very closely. They are easy to slide past unseen. And it is easy to adjust the way the legs move, the way the arms swing, the way the shoulders shift, the way the head is held. Easy to look like something else in the dark. 

Easy to look like one of _them_ , one of the _people_ who belong in the sunlight.

No one ever bothers it if they do see it, and almost no one even sees it to begin with. It is not their problem. They _want_ to look away, and it makes that easy for them.

It is not a problem for the little creatures in the den, either. The hard cockroaches with their many scurrying legs and their wiggling forehead fronds. The fuzzy rats with their worm tails and doll eyes, bright and shining red or black. The other things, it isn’t sure what, with their tiny wings and their tiny bodies and their tiny high-pitched whine as they try to bite it.

It slips through the crack in the wall and into the crawl space between the rooms of this old hive of a building that the people have abandoned. Five whole layers of rooms, and zero layers of people living in those rooms. But they could come back, the people, so it is safer to dig in, to find the hidden places, to drag in the soft things and the soft things and the soft things. To gather up and fluff and arrange until there is a perfect corner to curl up in.

All the soft things that it deserves now. It has earned. No more hard concrete and metal tables and slick tiles and bars pressing into it and holding it in place. No more bright lights and loud noises and humming machines and laughing men who want to hurt it and are only waiting their turn.

Now it has the soft things. Now it can curl up in the soft things, and drag some of the soft things over itself and around itself. Now it can burrow deep into the soft things and sleep in its cocoon and wait until it is time to hunt again.

But first, the bread. The little orange squares in their box. The little creatures are hungry, and they are too little and too innocent to have to earn their rewards. It pulls off its boots and puts them in the duffel bag with the teeth and fangs and talons and claws it did not bring to this past hunt. It puts the killing face in the bag, too. Zips it up.

Now it can curl up in the soft things. Now it can open up the bag with the bread. Now it can hold out pieces to the furry rats that know it and trust it and depend on it. Now it can tear open the box and scatter the hard little cheese crackers and the crumbs of bread for the dusty cockroaches with their wiggling and their darting and their timid, zippy shuffles.

It can’t do anything for the tiny things that bite it other than be sad when they die. It has given them water, and they like that. So do the other little creatures it shares the den with, shares the nest and all the soft things with.

It looks into the hole in a bit of fluffy pink insulation next to where it made its corner of soft things. Still there. So it sets the best bit of the bread and two orange squares inside the hole, using the metal hand, because things that bite it die, and the fuzzy worm-tailed mother rat in there needs to live so that her fuzzy, squirmy rat babies can live. 

She hisses at it, bearing sharp incisors in her tiny twitching mouth, but she always does. She always eats the reward it brings her, too. She is maybe like the woman earlier, afraid because she does not know that it is not there to harm her or her pink-nosed babies. Would never harm her. Would never harm any of them.

When it is sure that she will eat the bread and that she likes the square things, it retreats back to the heart of the pile of soft things, burrowing deep, gathering them tight, and shuddering itself to a well-earned sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: If the culinary prospects this chapter opens with are disturbing to you, put the food away before you get to even worse things to come further into the chapter. Bon appétit!


	4. Steve | Who’s to say I’m out of touch?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from [“I’m Not From Here”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JOwHt7uOzA) by James McMurtry.
> 
> There’s actually not much to warn about in this chapter. ^_^

**—New York City | Wednesday, 30 May 2012 | 6:30 a.m.—**

Around since the late ‘40s.

Steve pauses, giving his shoulders a rest and letting the dust settle before launching himself back at the bag fists first, his taped knuckles thudding into the canvas in a careful, precisely timed rhythm.

It makes sense, or the _timing_ does. There was a concerted effort to create an army of super soldiers in the ‘40s—and not just by the home team. He’s evidence of that effort, and he was only ever supposed to be a trial run before a whole lineup of soldiers could be enhanced. Schmidt was evidence of that, too, and of what could go wrong if the serum wasn’t perfect… or if the recipient was a fascist monster.

Zola… had been trying to create that with his experiments. Had been trying to build an army for Schmidt after the Red Skull’s own image. He’d been using what notes Schmidt had from Erskine and what could be reverse-engineered from Schmidt himself. 

And Schmidt’s HYDRA assassin might have failed to bring that vial of serum back after making his hit, but was that sample even necessary? Couldn’t Zola have succeeded if given enough time, even without stolen serum to replicate? Of course, he hadn’t _had_ that time. They’d— They’d put a stop to him, at least, even if at too great a cost.

And on this side of the pond, Project Rebirth wasn’t shut down after it turned out Steve himself was the only result they’d get. They’d set themselves up to keep trying. They’d drawn blood sample after blood sample, a few tissue samples, a few swabs from inside his cheek. He’d been there for days, getting poked and prodded, scanned and stuck—the works.

They hadn’t gotten anywhere at all with their attempts to reproduce the serum by the time he crashed the _Valkyrie_ —that he knew of. Knows of. But who tells him anything these days, and is that so different from then? No. Even at the best of times in the War, “need to know” was more often than not “need to rationalize it since you already found out what we were trying to hide from you.” 

If they’d made another super soldier, one they intended to keep in the shadows and use as an assassin, he’s the last person they’d have told. And they’d have been right to keep it from him, in their minds, because he’d have thrown himself into stopping them. And with the Howlies at his back, there wasn’t much he couldn’t do.

Except hold on.

Steve squints against the sweat dripping into his eyes, the tears, and walks the few feet to the bench where his water and towel are waiting. He wipes his face down with the towel before downing half his water in a rush and returning to the heavy bag.

He probably should have turned on the A/C down here before he started, but… Dang it, it doesn’t always have to be a chill 72 degrees everywhere. Sometimes a basement gym level should be hot and stuffy, and not artificial and sterile.

Everything is so artificial now.

Including him. Straight out of a bottle, just like Stark said. 

And maybe he’s not even unique, not alone, after all. Maybe there’s another artificial super soldier out there. 

It might be under a different name, but some of the same organizations that had backed Project Rebirth had been behind Banner’s run-in with the serum at Ross’s hands and his subsequent mistreatment. Someone was still working on it, decades after he went in the ice. 

If there _had_ been a success after him, during the War or just after it, that success might have been hidden away in the shadows, used for low warfare instead of high. A knife in the dark, a bullet from a rooftop, a grenade rigged to go off at a distance instead of daringly planted on a vehicle in motion. 

Or someone to keep all the other human weapons in check. Like Natasha’s Red Room enforcer theory.

Steve would like to think that if there _is_ a super soldier out there in the world tearing people to pieces in their homes and punching open safes after decades of covert operations—going mad, maybe, to switch tactics so suddenly—that the super soldier in question is not his Project Rebirth sibling, birthed from the same bottle and brought up by the same misguided parents.

But that just leaves HYDRA. 

It was a crowded playing field, sure. But there’d only been one other player making any progress at all that he knew of, and that had been HYDRA. Schmidt. Zola. Schmidt had gone… somewhere… when he’d held the Tesseract. Zola had been in prison. But before that, before the _Valkyrie_ , before the _train_ , Zola had picked up Erskine’s work and tested it on prisoners. Prisoners like—

The bag breaks open, the fourth casualty this session, and he hauls it off to one side before hanging up his next. Today’s a six-bag day, he can feel it. Too many emotions to burn off with anything less. He starts in on bag five.

Someone could have picked up Zola’s work, just as Zola had picked up Erskine’s. Or Schmidt could have… returned, somehow. Who really knew how the Tesseract worked or what exactly it did? Not even the S.H.I.E.L.D. scientists had seemed to, before Loki absconded with it a second time.

But even if Schmidt stayed wherever he was dragged off to, that still leaves the possibility that someone found Zola’s work and carried on with it while he rotted in a military prison. Or even found their own way into a super soldier serum by some alternate route. The Russians _had_ been trying. One of their officers had told him as much outside of Kronas.

Maybe they made it work.

Steve’s read about the Cold War. If ever there were a use for a covert super soldier, that would have been it—for both sides. Add that to Natasha’s certainty that this “Winter Soldier” is a longtime Red Room enforcer working under Department X, and it _does_ make sense. 

Arrange the facts they _do_ have in that order, and it’s clear: The Russians had a breakthrough hidden deep inside the shadow of their Iron Curtain, made their own super soldier, put him to use.

But it also doesn’t. It _doesn’t_ make sense. How could anyone be kept hidden so well for so long? Steve draws eyes everywhere he goes. It was bad when he was on the spangle circuit, it was bad on the front, it was bad on first waking up in this future that he’s not yet sure is a triumph.

And it’s still bad—worse, even—after the Chitauri. Now that he’s appearing in articles and magazines again, now that he’s on the news again with this new team at his side in full color instead of the Howlies in grayscale… He can’t go anywhere without seeing a camera or evidence of a camera.

There are cameras everywhere. Phones _are_ cameras now. Street lights have cameras. Every shop on every street has cameras in every corner. And it might not have been this way the entire time he was under the ice, but it’s been this way long enough for no one to think it’s strange and invasive.

You could never hide a super soldier in this world.

Even if this guy had been a ghost for a few decades, which is unlikely just due to gossip and the human need to brag about holding secrets—they hadn’t made posters about loose lips sinking ships for the fun and artistry—he couldn’t _still_ be a ghost. Not now. Not in this world where cameras are everywhere and whole teams of people do nothing but monitor the footage all day long.

And not with artificial intelligence. Programs like JARVIS—beings, really; Steve prefers to think of JARVIS as a helpful person on a public announcement system—they don’t need to eat, sleep, take breaks to walk around the block and stretch their legs. 

Stark says JARVIS is the best of his kind, and Steve has no reason not to believe him. But even a much less intelligent computer system than JARVIS can scan files and sort possible hits out from the sea of misses. Even without JARVIS scouring the data, something would have come up.

They found Loki and his scepter—at least that first time, in Stuttgart—in a matter of days using something called facial recognition, where a computer can see through all the cameras of the world and sort through all those faces to find just the one face you’re looking for. And that was amazing to him, and still is. And it was possible because of equally amazing satellites, miniature rockets going around the planet in space, taking yet more pictures of everything. 

This guy, this super soldier, would have been putting data out into the world for nearly a century.

And he just shows up now? This is the first of it, this one month of killings?

It isn’t that Steve doesn’t believe Natasha when she says this guy has been around since the ‘40s. It’s that he can’t believe this guy has been _so well-hidden_ since the ‘40s. Such a well-kept secret that only a few people even believe in him at all, and _they_ think he’s practically a ghost. 

That points more to Stark’s theory of successive agents than to one man. A program like the Black Widow program, maybe. Training a group of people and sending one out every so often when needed. Retiring agents and replacing them with younger, fresher recruits. 

A system like that would be much easier to hide, simply because it is that much less secret. More mundane. More same-old. Still deep in the shadows, but almost _reliant_ on that gossip to keep those shadows pulled close. A secret kept behind brightly lit walls can be easier to keep because you can see people poking at those walls before they get in, and because the true nature of the secret is buried in all the speculative background noise.

It would be less impossible, in any case, than a single man who must be at least 80 by now running around killing people and no one remarks on it over all those years despite it being some kind of scientific miracle that he’s still capable of it.

Sure, Steve himself is a scientific miracle still running around in his 90s, but as Stark so kindly put it, he’d had himself a nice, long ice-nap while practically everyone he knew grew old and died. This guy? This guy never sleeps, if Natasha has it right.

* * *

There are five more blue points in the mix this afternoon than at their briefing yesterday. Five more civilian casualties. And also another of the red, for S.H.I.E.L.D. Their killer’s been active again.

Steve looks at the tablet in front of him and marvels briefly at the progression from slabs of slate with bits of chalk to notebooks of fresh and plentiful paper to these delicate glass-faced tablets that respond to a mere finger’s brush. Bucky should have lived to see this future.

Of their new points today—one red, five blue—it looks like only two are fresh murders, one of each. The other four blue additions on the roster were earlier, but only attributed to this case recently. Steve wonders how many other people have been killed by this guy and are still waiting to be linked to the rest.

“So what we’re looking at,” Stark says with an artful gesture, “is a major cock-up.”

Steve looks up again and raises an eyebrow. He should probably chide the man on his language in order to maintain his facade as an old-fashioned bumpkin, but he’s more interested in the pattern of hits depicted on the glowing screen that takes up the entirety of the wall. “In what way?”

Stark shakes his head. “Well someone turned this guy loose. That’s enough of a mistake to qualify, even without the rest, don’t you think?” He crosses his arms only to immediately move one back out to point at the screen. “That’s in a month. That’s twenty-nine people. _In one month_. That’s practically a murder a day.”

He starts pacing, and Steve wills himself to remain seated and not grab Stark’s shoulders and press him into a chair. The Howlies were never big on discipline, but they could sit still during a planning session.

“Someone trained this guy—he’s too good to be self-taught and he’s been at it too long for beginner’s luck—so they trained him and packed him a knife for lunch and sent him off somewhere to be a good little murder puppet, and I’m betting he was supposed to come back home by curfew, but little Pinocchio went off the deep end instead, head first into crazy town, killing people like a real boy.”

“It could fit with Nat’s description, yes,” Steve says, if for nothing else, then to give Stark a chance to inhale before he winds Clint up any tighter with his rambling about people being controlled like puppets to do the bidding of others. With Loki vanished who knew where, and with the Tesseract, no less, Clint’s been far enough out on the edge without Stark’s hopefully unintentional needling.

He gives the screen another close inspection. If their guy’s an enforcer, an assassin sent out for sworn enemies and straying allies alike, he’d need to know his targets. And he definitely knew twenty of his targets to date, because those twenty were all connected through S.H.I.E.L.D. But twenty out of twenty-nine leaves nine… _whats?_

Extras? Mistakes? Murders just for fun? Whichever it is, that’s an enforcer who’s lost track of who needed to be sanctioned. But there’s still the question of why go after these extracurriculars just because he couldn’t tell who was next on his list. Unless he had gone, as Stark put it, “head first into crazy town.”

Steve points to the new cluster of blue data points, four on one street in one evening, only added to their case because of the nature of their injuries. “Okay. The S.H.I.E.L.D. fatalities are unfortunate. But there are nine blue points now, Tony. Nine to twenty-nine, not four to nineteen. And that ratio concerns me. Those are _civilians_ , alone and in groups.”

“Are you thinking we need to shift our focus? Because we can shift our focus. Double our focus. Focus on both at once. JARVIS—”

Steve holds up a hand. “I’m concerned that _he’s_ shifting his focus, Tony. If he’s decided to skip out on his objectives and go after just anyone…”

“But he hasn’t. He goes back to the official killings every time he deviates from the pattern,” Clint says. “It’s not S.H.I.E.L.D., S.H.I.E.L.D., S.H.I.E.L.D., sudden departure to pick off nine civilians. This isn’t duck-duck-goose. It’s a free-for-all with a side of mix-and-match. A sampler menu or something.”

Stark drums his fingers on the table and finally takes a seat, though he slumps into it and immediately puts his feet up. “Maybe he has moments of clarity, where he’s going down his list of S.H.I.E.L.D. targets, and then gets…” Stark waves his fingers in the air near his ears. “Distracted. Fogged up. Scrambled around in the head.”

Clint rubs at an eye, and when he puts his hand back down, his expression is almost closed off, like he’d been at times while Fury briefed them. Steve makes a mental note to talk to him after this. And to Stark, too. They can’t work like a team if one of them is accidentally egging another of them on. And it had better be accidental. They have enough problems cooperating outside of an actual battle situation as it is, and living together in this architectural nightmare hasn’t helped much.

“Distracted enough to make work for himself instead of laying low until he has another lead or receives his next instructions?” Steve shakes his head. “Each hit is another opportunity for something to go wrong, for someone to catch him, get a good look at him, maybe injure him.” 

Steve leans back and tries to let the red and blue dots resolve into a pattern. “Let’s say he hasn’t actually abandoned his kill list, and is merely filling time between sanctioned hits. He’s got to be smart to do all this and escape capture. That makes him smart enough to avoid doing something stupid just to pass the time.”

“Or lucky. People get lucky.” Stark is out of his seat again, pacing and flailing. “This guy’s got luck coming out his ears, if you ask me. Leaving mess after mess like this, and the people picking up after him can’t figure out who he is? Luck.”

Steve chooses to be the better man and not snap at him to sit down already. “Luck aside, there’s no way these hits were just for fun to keep from being bored. I’m saying that these aren’t incidental, not to him. He has a reason for going after each of these people. We just have to find out what that is. How they all fit together, S.H.I.E.L.D. and civilian, both. Something more than ‘right place, right time, right mood.’”

They look at the screen in silence and a shared team spirit of frustration. Clint drums his fingers silently on his own tablet, coming back out of his shell in the absence of puppet commentary. Stark gestures as though having a silent conversation with himself and emphasizing point after contradictory point. Natasha… Is still and pensive. Coiled, maybe.

“Nat?” Steve raises his eyebrows at her in invitation. “You’ve been quiet.”

She purses her lips, and Steve wonders if she’s debating whether to trust them with her thoughts, or whether it’s more that she’s not sure where the borders of those thoughts are yet and wants to firm them up a bit first, put them into neat, concrete statements.

“We’re thinking that he’s going after S.H.I.E.L.D. because that’s what Nick _said_ he was doing,” she finally says. “D.C. is full of S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel. That’s our East Coast headquarters. But these are very carefully selected targets, not merely convenience kills.”

She swipes a hand over her tablet and the presentation screen on the wall shifts from the grid with the dots to a series of case files. “He’s killed just these two operatives in an apartment complex housing twelve of them. Why not the other ten? He’s gone after service personnel after hours and left administrators burning midnight oil in their offices untouched.”

She shrugs, artfully casual in that way that Steve almost wants to sketch. “If I’m gunning for S.H.I.E.L.D.,” she says, “I know I’d hit the important people, not the janitor.”

She has a point, and Steve doubts she means to say that the janitor was worthless compared to those with more prestigious jobs. Just less strategic.

And she’s right. If he were going to infiltrate an enemy bunker, or in this case, an enemy office building, he wouldn’t stop to force a janitor to swallow a bottle of drain cleaner and then slice his blistered face off into the mop water before breaking the mop handle off inside him and hacking stars into his back. He’d have maintained secrecy until he got to the heart of the building where the key personnel were located.

“Rogers is right. All of his hits are _choices_ he’s making. Why _these_ people and not others?” Natasha taps an index finger once on the tabletop, gracefully making her point and reinforcing it. “We should consider the possibility that he’s after something else. Something bigger than S.H.I.E.L.D., or something that’s just a small part of S.H.I.E.L.D. Maybe both.”

Stark snaps his fingers. “Overlap. Not all S.H.I.E.L.D. is a target and not all targets are S.H.I.E.L.D., but there’s some element—third bubble in the Venn diagram—that everyone has in common.”

Clint looks up from his tablet. “Well, our nine civilians are all pieces of shit. Rapists, muggers, domestic abusers, drug dealers… Does that count?”

Steve considers it. “Enforcer turned part-time vigilante?” 

That’s not usually how that works. When someone leaves the fold and takes matters into their own hands, _they leave the fold._ But this guy hasn’t left. He’s still killing S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives—and office staff, and support personnel, and groundskeepers—just as he was likely ordered to do.

“Maybe,” Stark mutters. “Except why target S.H.I.E.L.D., then? Why these twenty? They’ve all got sparkling clean records—boring at the very worst—and some of them have awards for service and valor. Pierce even _turned down_ the Nobel Peace Prize. I’m the last person to pat S.H.I.E.L.D. on the back, but as far as members of shadowy paramilitary organizations go, these ones are the good guys in the barrel of rotten apples.” 

Clint rubs the bridge of his nose. “For a certain value of good,” he mutters, clearly thinking about what’s not down on file.

Steve is definitely going to have to sit down with Clint and have a talk. He might not be as overt about it as Steve, but that’s a guy who questions authority and sees through the lies. He wants a full picture, and Clint’s got that camera.

* * *

The news sure has changed while he was under the ice, Steve muses to himself that evening. And not just because papers are apparently dying out to be replaced with bird calls. Tweets. 

Steve frowns at the screen, which is split between footage from their battle on the streets earlier that month on the one side, a young blond woman sitting at a desk on the other, and a rolling bar across the bottom that’s needlessly distracting. 

“In tonight’s news,” the reporter is saying in a voice that’s simultaneously and artificially both cheerful and concerned, “the self-styled ‘Avengers’—that collection of colorful heroes who saved New York from aliens just last month—are on the road.”

Really? That’s already made the news? They only firmed that up that afternoon. Fury must have a reason for telling the press, but Steve’s not sure what that reason would be. Wouldn’t this just put their killer on alert and maybe send him into hiding? It isn’t surprising, in any case, that Steve’s been left out of that loop. Maybe when they’re in D.C., he’ll pay the man a visit at the Triskelion. Go to the source for his answers and not leave until he gets them.

“Their destination?” the reporter asks on the screen, as though announcing an exciting vacation. “Washington, D.C., where a gruesome string of deaths points the finger at a possible new villainous threat. And people are really talking.”

Her side of the screen switches to a series of people being interviewed in front of the Washington Monument earlier that day, each of them with a little caption just above the flashing marquee at the bottom. Some of them seem to have been brought in specifically for this interview, and some seem to have been ambushed by the reporter while minding their own business. Steve knows only too well how irksome that can be, but only one guy partway through the string of interviewees looks like the ambush irritates him.

“Look, I’m all for heroes and I’m sure they’re nice kids. But this is my city. I don’t want ‘em tearing down my buildings left and right. I saw what happened to Harlem a while back, and there weren’t even aliens involved that time. If they gotta to turn a city block into rubble, let ‘em do it in their _own_ backyard.” [Daryl Lynwood, City Planner, Retired]

Something tells him Banner isn’t going to cave to Stark’s nagging for him to join them for precisely that reason.

“Like, omg, can you even imagine? I’m not missing _any_ photo ops. My phone is staying _so_ charged. Maybe they’ll come by my Starbucks, like, while I’m on shift. They like fast food, right? And they have to get a pick-me-up from somewhere. What do you think Captain America likes to order? Is it too forward if I write Steve on his cup and make the V a heart? He’s probably not into guys, but I’m so into him. Total hottie _working_ that wholesome look.” [Stewart Hutchinson, Barista]

Huh. Well that _is_ a legal option these days. One of the unequivocally good things about this future he woke up in.

“Look, I don’t have time for— Yeah, I’ve seen him. The guy’s nightmare fuel. If Captain America really does want to come kick his ass, I’ll move back down here to D.C. just so I can fall in behind him. Now if you’ll excuse me, I gotta take this call. Yeah? Speaking. Uh-huh? Uh-huh. Well how soon _can_ you be there? I’m leaving town and I’ve got the movers arriving at…” [Sam Wilson, VA Counselor]

Well, if it turns out they need a hand, this fearless busy jogger just volunteered. 

“Oh, no I didn’t see his face. He didn’t _have_ a face. It was just a black smudge where a face would be. Sure, it was dark out, but there were lights on. If he’d had a face, I know I’d have seen it. But I think he must have robbed an army surplus or a sporting goods store, you know, because he had a _lot_ of knives on him. A _lot_. I hope the Avengers don’t hurt him. Maybe they can just talk to him. Because, you know, he saved my _life_ in that parking garage. Thank you, Mr Red Star!” [Valorie Wilkerson, Realtor]

Figures this guy’d have an admirer. Though he can’t exactly fault someone for being thankful for a rescue.

“Avengers? Sure we can use some Avengers. It’s rough out here. Just a couple nights ago, right? We get the call there’s been a shooting, some turf war or other. And they’ve got all these witnesses from the building standing around in the flashing lights, some of them crying, and all of them swearing up and down there were gunshots for nearly fifteen minutes and they all stayed the hell away from their windows ‘cause they ain’t dumb. But get this. Every one of the bodies we carted off—all four—were straight up _stabbed_ , not shot. Some of them stabbed a _lot_. Like, _decoratively_. Stars. I [beep] you not. So my guess is, dude shows up to a gun fight with a couple knives, somehow Batmans his way into beating all their asses, and then drifts on down the street like it’s nothing. Poof. Just gone. _He is the night_. Maybe he oughta _be_ an Avenger.” [Isabela Ojeda, Paramedic]

Well, there are the four extra blue dots.

“What this city _really_ needs is—”

Steve gets up and turns off the television with a gusty sigh. 

Yes, their team is made up of people who have some very checkered pasts—himself included, for all the history books seem to have forgotten everything that didn’t fit the golden boy image. But add “Mr Red Star” to the roster? Just because some of his murders ended up saving lives?

No. That’s a very checkered _present_. This killer would be a bad, bad fit for the Avengers Initiative. The messes _they_ leave behind are, so far, much less organic. Though flattening a city block or two does make for plenty of damage to people’s lives and livelihoods, so there’s that.

Steve considers turning the news back on, or finding something else to watch, maybe with a more straightforward arrangement of elements on the screen and not so many flashing, scrolling distractions. But he knows he’s better off packing up some clothes for their trip tomorrow, fitting in one last session down at the gym, maybe checking in with Clint. All of that’s better and more useful than watching people talk on screen while they play the same three clips of the team battling aliens on loop. 

A lot has changed about the world, but there’s still only so much of himself he can stand to watch on television.

Maybe he should take JARVIS up on the offer of a daily digest, just the facts, none of the local flavor. Although… some of that local flavor had appeal. 

Turning your back on a reporter who ambushed you with a camera team at her side and a mic in her hand so you can hash out the logistics of scheduling a move while they try to regain your attention? When you know you’re on national television, but you don’t care because keeping your life in order is more important than her getting a story you didn’t ask to be part of? 

He’ll salute that kind of attitude.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, Steve. If only you knew how close to (and yet how far away from) the truth you are.


	5. Clint | Why can’t I shake it (tell me where will this end)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from [“Blue Me”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lK_-VICs8cM) by Dolly Parton.
> 
> Content warning and general note at the bottom. ^_^

**—New York City | Thursday, 31 May 2012 | 4:30 a.m.—**

He knows he’s not doing what he’s supposed to be doing because his arms and legs are heavier than he knows they are. When he’s _behaving_ , everything is easy. Everything is a smooth glide through blue-tinted shadows and out into the light once more, a pleasure to obey. 

So he’s wading through this invisible sea of sludgy peanut butter, instead. Is fighting his mind, fighting his body, fighting his soul if he still had access to that, if it hadn’t been stolen away and locked in blue and poisoned by his own betrayal of his friends, his family, his teammates.

He’s wading through the soup of his mind. Treading soup, not water. And it’s not easy. And it’s agony. And it’s useless. And it won’t work. But he does it, he fucking does it, just so that he can stay here. Stay still. Keep his arms at his sides, his bow hanging down by his knees, his feet in one spot.

Doing nothing has never been so hard.

And doing nothing will not save her. Doing nothing will only kill her more slowly than if he gives in, if he lets the blue light wash over him fully and carry him along on waves of that’s right, good job, exactly like that, so pleasing, you have gained my approval, little ant. Now do what you must do to keep it.

He wants to be sick, to vomit up all the blue, to spit and spit until he can’t hear blue, feel blue, see blue. He wants to sluice out the emptiness that’s left until he’s alone again in his own skull and owns every one of his thoughts.

He wants to raise his bow, nock the arrow, pull back the string. 

He wants to grab her and pull her out before she drowns, to reach down and save her, his hand around her wrist, her hand around his, and together pull her up, pull her to safety, undo what’s been done.

He wants to put an arrow in her heart.

He wants to rip his head off, or rip his arms off, or break every finger, every arrow, the bow, too, to make it stop, stop, stop, because he _won’t_. He won’t shoot her, he won’t kill her, he won’t end her. He refuses, he _can’t_.

Please.

That blue-lit laughing bastard can take all that he loves from him—has done it before, has set him against the only family he has left, even if it’s hardly a family at all. But he cannot force Clint to destroy them. Can’t make him shoot her. Can’t make him reach in only to hold her under. Can’t make him kill her. Not again. Never again. 

Please.

Please, not again. 

_Please_.

He sits up with a groan as the lamp in the corner flashes on-off, on-off. Fuck. Clint rakes a hand through his sweaty hair and fixes the room in his mind even as he reaches for the mirror he now keeps by his bed—his first stop these days, before his ears. 

Blue. But not wrong. Not glowing. Not _that_ blue.

Rimmed in red, and the bags underneath have bags of their own. But that’s a normal blue, a human blue.

The flashing on-off, on-off comes again, more insistent this time, and he low-key regrets agreeing to let that lamp become a visual for the knocking someone’s doing on his door. Sure, it means he’ll actually wake up without hearing the knock. But that’s exactly the problem: it means he’ll wake up when people knock.

“Aw, come on,” he mumbles as the lamp just keeps strobing his bedroom like the world’s least exciting disco ball. The mirror shows him exactly how much like shit he looks—lamp-lit shit, shadowed shit, lamp-lit shit, shadowed shit—and the shit level is right up there with how he feels. 

Why’s he got to deal with people right now?

Clint puts the mirror away, face down, and puts in his ears before hauling himself out of the sheets that cling to his damp skin. Should probably toss on some pants. Would serve whoever that is right if he doesn’t, though.

Why is there no coffee smell. He knows he set the timer. No one should have to get up without coffee. That’s cruel. Unusual. Definitely a punishment. Maybe he’ll sue.

More knocking, now with sound effects to join the lamp.

He’s not putting pants on. This jerk deserves a good look at what Clint’s packing. He hopes whoever it is is easily embarrassed. Or at least mildly offended. Even extremely offended.

Though impressed would be okay, too.

Clint finishes his amble from bedroom to main room and yanks open the door, glaring muzzily at the center of a massive torso. He can hear the Star-Spangled Banner playing somewhere, maybe a dozen bald eagles screeching, before the patriotic pecs resolve themselves in his conscious mind as Steve Rogers in a t-shirt several sizes too small.

“Whuh?” Clint rubs at an eye, realizes he’s slouching so low he’s practically sideways against the door frame and pulls himself upright. “Cap. Uh.”

He doesn’t have to turn around to know the place looks like a drunken tornado had a week-long threesome with a pack of hyenas. No one ever said he was good at keeping house and lots of people have said the opposite, usually while grabbing their stuff and storming out. 

Also, he’s got no pants on.

“I wasn’t sure you’d hear me knocking,” Cap murmurs. “JARVIS said you wouldn’t mind, but… I can come back later.”

“No, no.” Clint takes a step back into the main room and waves vaguely toward the pile of questionable laundry that has a sofa under it. “Mi casa and all that. Come on in. Wasn’t sleeping anyway.”

Is it treason to lie to Captain America? Probably not. Probably way worse to flash him. He’s got both bases covered there. And not a stitch else. Where the hell are his pants?

“I mean,” Clint says to the room in general as he makes his way to the kitchenette, “I _was_ sleeping. But it wasn’t a good dream. So. Thanks and stuff.”

The coffee is not brewing. Why is the— It’s set. He set the timer. The red light is there. The red light that promises there will be coffee when he gets out of bed. The _lying_ red light. The— 

The clock on the microwave tells him it’s nearly 5 in the morning. 

Captain Asshole is an early riser. 

Clint sort of wants to kill him. But he’d rather do that with a full pot of coffee in his gut. And maybe he’d rather put some pants on before killing him. Killing people without wearing pants says things to investigators that he doesn’t mean to say. With pants, it’ll still be a crime of passion, but not a pantsless crime of passion. It’s a big distinction.

Though with that chest shrink-wrapped in a t-shirt that small, maybe a pantsless crime of passion would be understandable. No one would judge him. It’s the hairy butt crack of the night, nearly 5 in the morning, not even actually 5 yet, when you could maybe get a pass for being too eager to start the day.

Captain Asshole, shivved by naked, coffee-deprived Avenger at ass o’clock, the headlines would read. The pantsless crime scene caption would say something about how anyone who wakes someone else up at _nearly_ 5 in the morning deserves to get what’s coming to him.

If Clint were anyone else, maybe he’d feel ashamed that it takes him a solid ten minutes of rummaging around before he’s dressed in sweats and a hoodie and clutching a cup of drip coffee’s slightly less glorious cousin—instant coffee right out of the microwave. The genuine elixir of life is still busy brewing and he can’t wait for that.

“If you want to talk,” Cap says, perched sort of awkwardly on the edge of a sofa cushion and framed by a pile of hoodies and one pair of boxers, “about the nightmare, or about anything else…”

And the thing is, that’s some genuine concern coming out of him. Because Cap’s a genuine guy. 

Maybe Clint’ll hold off on killing him.

* * *

“It’s just that you’re still there,” Clint says, partway through his coffee and feeling a touch more human. “You’re right there behind your own eyes, and you’re thinking things with your own brain, making plans just as inventive as usual. Maybe even more.”

And that’s the rub, isn’t it? “Maybe even more” doesn’t begin to cover it. He’d never have included gouging out some dude’s eyeball and good portion of skull in a plan to get some equipment, material, whatever. 

His plan would have included grabbing the guy and holding his face up to the scanner plate. Maybe leaving him tied up in a closet. If the dude was a jerk, then maybe leaving him in his boxers and socks in that closet. Maybe drawing a dick on his forehead.

But not stabbing him in the face and taking a holographic snapshot of his eyeball as he writhed and screamed and ultimately died. Not even if he was a jerk.

“Yeah,” he adds with a grimace. “Maybe _more_ inventive, and lots and lots more ruthless. The ‘trying to take down a helicarrier with hundreds of people you know and work with on board, dumping them in the ocean or worse surrounded by flaming metal wreckage’ kind of ruthless.”

“I can only imagine.” Cap nods like he gets it—like he gets what Clint’s saying, not like he understands what that’s like. 

It’s kind of nice, actually. Someone else who’d crashed a plane in the ocean would be trying to make it like they were the same thing, like sacrificing himself to save others was the same as trying to kill as many friends and coworkers and innocents as were available in a given space because an alien told you to. 

Cap doesn’t pull that shit. He’s rapidly losing the Asshole nickname. It’s like he doesn’t even want it.

Clint takes another drag on his shitty instant coffee. “Sometimes you sort of wish you weren’t there behind your eyes,” he says. And yeah, he’s still avoiding that first person, and yeah, some S.H.I.E.L.D. therapist is going to have a fun time holding that over his head when he next goes in for psych evals to maintain his field clearance.

“Because if you weren’t there, you wouldn’t have to know what you were doing. You could just check out and get the rundown later. An overview of all the shit you did, like reading a report instead of living it.”

But it doesn’t work like that. Didn’t. Hadn’t worked like that. No, he’d gotten a front row seat, a first-person shooter game that was no game at all. With someone else at the controller, but also himself. One and the same, and so, so wrong.

Clint huffs out a laugh he doesn’t feel. “But when you’re actually steering things, when you _are_ there, then at least you _know_. You know what happened, and you _have_ to know all the stuff you’re trying to make up for. Can’t have it both ways, repaying debts you don’t even know about.”

“Doesn’t seem to me like it’s your debt to repay,” Cap says softly, staring at his hands in his lap. “But I know why you want to repay it. That, I really _do_ understand.”

Clint stares at him. That he knows of, Cap didn’t get zapped by a mind control stick and turned into a godling’s butt monkey or anything even remotely close. But he’s working through _something_.

“Some things aren’t our fault,” Cap says, like he’s trying to convince himself. “They _aren’t_. They just happen, and we have to deal with that.” 

He looks up, face resolute but sad. Noble in a way that would look goofy as hell on anyone else. “But they sure do feel like our fault. Like we could have done something different, or better, and we could have stopped it. Could have moved faster, or watched our own back for a change, or held on, or…”

Cap shakes his head and straightens his shoulders. “And we can try to make up for it, try to make it worthwhile somehow, like it didn’t happen for nothing. Like there was a reason for it. But turns out even crashing a plane into the ocean won’t change anything. Everything just comes right back around.”

The last of Clint’s coffee is cold and grainy, but that’s what you get for drinking instant without measuring that shit out. He gets up to pour a cup’s worth of the real stuff—not the good stuff, necessarily, but real enough to be adored—into a fresh mug, and then brings the mug and the carafe to the sofa again.

“Here, man,” Clint says, a bit brusquely, but he doubts Cap’ll mind. “You need some. Liquid comfort. Take it black or I’m taking it back.”

Cap accepts the mug with a bemused frown, and he doesn’t get up to add anything to it. Which is for the best, because Clint doesn’t keep that shit in his little kitchenette. Who has time for creamer and all the rest?

He lifts the carafe to his mouth and pulls a few deep swallows that come just shy of scalding everything from his lips to his stomach on its way down. Oh yeah. This is how a day _ought_ to start if it’s got to start at all.

“It’s got to suck putting a plane down to end a war and waking up to start a new war with aliens, I guess.” Clint takes another drink and wipes his lips on the back of his hand. 

He’s going to have to touch up on his history lessons to put _all_ the pieces together, figure out what exactly _Captain America_ thinks he fucked up. But this much he’s pretty sure about: Altruistic kamikaze nuke crashes in the Arctic shouldn’t come full circle with a side of space whale.

Cap breathes a short laugh into his coffee mug. “Well, that, yeah.” 

“You were talking about something else?” 

He shrugs. “There’s actually a lot of things that came full circle. Died to end a war, woke up to fight another one. Saw that wretched blue cube fall into the sea and be lost forever, woke up to find the blasted thing being used to make more weapons for different people.”

Cap pauses to swallow some coffee. “Died putting Schmidt’s mystical technology into the ocean to save people, woke up to dismantle Loki’s mystical technology to save people.” He grimaces. “Even some of the same people, geographically speaking.”

Right, because most of the actual people are old or buried. Man, if anyone needed a friend, it was Captain Asshole here with nothing better to do at nearly 5 in the morning than sit on questionable laundry and drink Clint’s coffee.

“Yeah, okay,” he agrees.

Clint supposes the Tesseract and that evil brainwashing spear count as mystical enough. And bombs and wormholes are both sort of technology. He’s not so sure about the “died” part, but hey, maybe Cap has a whole other side. This darker, sadder side. Maybe a side that feels as guilty as Clint himself does.

Clint squints his eyes at the middle distance, and then decides to just go for it. He’s here, isn’t he? He came knocking. And he said if Clint wanted to talk… “Hey. What exactly happened with the Tesseract? That first time, I mean.” 

History only ever said Cap and Red Skull went down with the ship, one of them trying to bomb the Eastern Seaboard, the other trying to save the world. But word had it Cap’s debrief after defrost added a few details. Details like “Schmidt grabbed the cube, and he disappeared into space,” and “the cube melted through the plane and fell in the ocean.” 

Best they can tell from security tapes, Loki also grabbed the cube. Also disappeared, though maybe not into space. But after that, the similarities dropped off. Clint doesn’t have access to Cap’s full report. But’s he’s got access to Cap. And yeah. He _does_ want to talk.

Cap takes a breath and lets it out, thinking. “HYDRA used the Tesseract to power their weapons and the _Valkyrie_. Used it to make those weapons, too. It had a lot of energy.” He takes a sip of coffee. “Schmidt had it in a little cage with handles, not like the briefcase SHIELD put it in after we got it back. But when he touched it directly, it disintegrated him.”

“He didn’t disappear? Didn’t step through a portal or anything?”

“No.” Cap’s wearing an expression partway between grim and disturbed. “He broke apart. Seemed to get sucked upward in bits as he crumbled. There was—” Cap shakes his head. “It was horrifying and beautiful. This brilliant field of stars and backlit dust, pinks and blues and deep greens.”

Cap turns his coffee mug around in his hands, maybe imagining the colors, maybe just feeling fidgety. “He dissolved into a beam of light and then the _Valkyrie_ clouded it over and he was gone along with the rest. Like he never was.”

Clint swallows. Red Skull hasn’t come back, yet. Maybe—probably—never will. Him and all the rest of HYDRA, a thing of the past. He’d been hoping that maybe, just maybe, Loki was every bit as gone. But… 

“It wasn’t at all like the tape of Loki, Clint. Not in the ways that count.” Cap shifts slightly on his perch at the edge of the sofa. “Schmidt left this world terrified, in pain, and screaming. Loki stepped back out of this world like he had someplace to be, and popped back in to give me a headache and damage some property.”

Cap shrugs. “Holding the Tesseract is different for humans, even the enhanced ones.”

Well, isn’t that just comforting as fuck. 

He wishes he could say he didn’t understand how Loki went from “bound and gagged prisoner” to “making off with the Tesseract and the scepter and no one can find him” in the blink of an eye. He wishes he didn’t know full well how Loki would have stolen his scepter back. 

But it wouldn’t even have been difficult. Just put on an illusion, play along, accept the case from whichever STRIKE agent was handing it over, and poof. Presto-chango, off he goes.

Why he’d opted to fight Cap looking like Cap is anyone’s guess, least of all Cap’s because he can’t remember it, but Clint is betting the reason is twisty and up to no good. Just like the rest of that snake. 

He’s not even sure what he’s hoping for when he hopes that maybe the Tesseract took Loki the way it took Red Skull. He knows it didn’t. He knows Loki came back, grabbed the scepter, wrestled Cap through a couple of glass floors, and took off again for parts unknown. He knows that. There’s footage, even if it’s a bit blurry from interference.

But is it really so wrong to wish that green-eyed turd got flushed down clean without clogging the pipes and spilling existential murky toilet water all over the floor?

Clint sighs and runs his hand through his hair. Takes a long swallow from his carafe of pitch-black nectar. “I just can’t stop looking, is all,” he mutters. “I can’t shake it.”

Why the hell is he confiding this to Captain America of all people? So Mr. Golden Boy has his own internal struggles. That’s no reason to share this with him. But share it, he does. Maybe it’s another of Cap’s super powers.

“I keep thinking I hear him in my head, or feel him in my thoughts. And I _don’t_. He’s not there, but… It’s like he left an aftertaste or something. Like he _could_ spy on my insides if he wanted to, and it’s the _possibility_ I’m hearing and feeling, but only the possibility. Like ‘what if’ was a physical sensation.”

Clint rubs at an eye. “I keep, I don’t know, looking at myself and trying to see something wrong. Something off. Something that would tell me if I’m still my own or if I’m his again.”

“Do you know what that might look like?”

Clint shrugs. “Wish I did. All I’ve got is eye color. And they’re blue to start, so that’s a lot of help.” He hugs his coffee close, a steamy, hot ball of comfort against his belly. “You’ve seen the Tesseract. And I saw the others, while I was… you know. They all had blue eyes, just a hint of electric blue crackling through them.”

Cap nods and finishes his own coffee, but doesn’t hold the mug out for a refill. “I’ll watch for it.” He pauses, looking like he’s about to say something, about to start a new part of this conversation, but isn’t sure how best to go about it. 

“Clint,” he finally says. “We’ve got your back. This team might have been put together for a different purpose and might have been held together under false pretenses when things were new and rocky, but it’s still a team. And you’re still a part of it.”

Cap’s earnest face is somehow _not_ comical. Clint doesn’t go in for team spirit or rah-rah cheerleading speeches. But he can’t quite dismiss this for some reason, even though it should sound like a “today is not that day” spiel.

“Every single one of us is a disaster on our own. But as a team, looking out for each other, working together, that doesn’t matter. We aren’t a chain with links that can weaken and snap, each member a point of vulnerability.”

He shakes his head. “We’re a cord made up of individual strands working toward a common goal, each of us supporting the others. Loki’s going to have to saw through every one of us to break this team, and he’s not going to get that chance.”

Cap looks like he’s planning to see to that personally, and Clint’s actually starting to think he _could_. Sheesh. Captain Stubborn. Captain Wrecking Ball. Captain Unstoppable Force. He’d hate to have gotten in his way back when he had Sergeant Immovable Object at his side.

But it’s nice to think that it’s not just Natasha who’s got his back. To know at least one other person on this roster is pulling for the team and not just looking out for number one.

“And, hey.” Cap lifts a hand to rest at the back of his head, and the unshakable certainty drifts back into something more relatable. “I’ll talk to Stark. He’s got some of his father in him. Brilliant and full of good intentions, but doesn’t think things through before they come out of his mouth.”

“You don’t need to do that,” Clint mutters. “I need to just get over my shit.” God, Captain America sitting Stark down and giving him a lecture in interpersonal dynamics. As though Stark isn’t going to just double down when confronted.

Cap shakes his head again. “But you don’t have to do that _alone_. And the puppet comments aren’t helping.”

“Yeah.” Aw, man, this is going to be a disaster. He takes a gulp from his carafe. “Yeah, okay.” Better buckle up. Maybe he can change the subject, throw the guy off that scent, buy himself some time before he goads Stark into becoming _really_ unbearable.

“So what did you actually come knocking for at ass o’clock, anyway?”

Cap blinks, and maybe he’s thrown by the “ass” thing, or maybe Clint’s just reading into stuff. He doesn’t have enough coffee in him yet to know for sure. Still on his first carafe. But there obviously _was_ something, because Cap’s back down to business in a flash, and not sounding like an after-school special on bullying.

“Tell me about S.H.I.E.L.D.” Cap leans forward, elbows on knees and face full of strategy. No wonder HYDRA lost. “The real S.H.I.E.L.D. From an insider perspective.”

Oh boy. Where to even _start_ with that?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: This chapter includes mild and brief speculation about potentially suicidal inclinations at the heart of Steve’s crashing the _Valkyrie_. Also, Clint himself is a depressed puppy.
> 
> End note: There’s a reason Loki isn’t in the tags for this fic, folks. Our peeps might be discussing him in the aftermath of the Battle of New York and all the shit that went down (and he is definitely still in the wind after having skipped town with the Tesseract a la time heist), but he doesn’t actually feature in this fic. Just throwing that out there, since I can see how this chapter might give the impression that he’s involved and/or appearing at some point, and I’d hate to get anyone’s hopes up. (And I should probably add that any Loki-hate sentiment expressed in this chapter is coming from Clint, not me. ^_^)


	6. Interlude | Your meanest thought, your darkest fear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from [“The Invisible Man,”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaJTZWCWmvo) by Queen. 
> 
> Content Warnings: There’s some allusion to the sausage-creation process, but it’s brief. Other than that bit of mental imagery and the sort of violence we all expect by now (right?), there are some nasty allusions to the trash party. On the whole, though, bearing that in mind, this should be a relatively safe chapter.

### Brandon the intern

**—Washington D.C. | Thursday, 31 May 2012 | 7:30 a.m.—**

Somehow, when he decided to go for this internship, he’d failed to consider how much waiting around there would be. 

Waiting around seems to be at least half of what he does, though his current evaluation is definitely biased by the way he had to wait for an uber when his car pool bailed, wait for a tray of coffee from the cafe across the street that Congressman Waldroup prefers over the more convenient Golden Bean in the hotel lobby, wait for the elevator that _isn’t_ out of order to clear of more important people getting to meetings, wait for Waldroup himself to finally show up and complain about the cold coffee and busted elevator, and now wait for Parsons to arrive.

He’s learning an awful lot about waiting. Not so much about political process. Or government. Or policy.

What he’s learned about _those_ so far amounts to: enough money will buy you whatever vote you want, and the only people not involved in something sneaky and probably illegal are the people too new on the scene to have gravitated toward their preferred form of corruption.

Oh, and he’s also learned that he doesn’t want to be in politics, after all.

Because Parsons is coming here to discuss how everyone can make money if Waldroup goes ahead and votes to let them dump things in the water that lead to three-headed fish and glowing clams. And if this meeting goes like the other ones went, everyone will be making lots and lots of money, and there will be lots and lots of three-headed fish and glowing clams. And probably a whole family of godzillas.

But it’ll be legal, technically. And profitable.

So far, this internship has been kind of like visiting the factory that makes delicious, delicious sausage and getting to know all the little piggies before they get clubbed in the head and dumped in the mixing machine with the rats and human toes.

Only the sausage runs the world, apparently, and you can’t just boycott it or go vegan or whatever.

### Cindy at the hotel front desk

**—Washington D.C. | Thursday, 31 May 2012 | 7:45 a.m.—**

Room 125 is clearly having an affair. 

Cindy ought to write a novel. A whole series, even. She could be the next Agatha Christie if she just took all these people who come through the hotel and wrote about them. All their little motives and the lies they tell.

Like Room 125. Look at him, blathering on over the phone to his sweetheart, look honey, I’m sorry, this trip’s just running a little long. I’ll be home as soon as I can. Love you, too.

Right. With lipstick on his collar and bringing up a plate of spongy eggs, soggy bacon and gravy-drenched biscuit, but _also_ a bowl of fruit and granola over Greek yogurt? Sure thing, his trip’s just running long.

Cindy opens a new window and looks him up. Yep. He booked all three nights at the start, asked specifically for the room with the jacuzzi. There’s no way he’s surprised he had to stay the third night.

Tch. She’d be doing Mrs. Room 125 a favor if she called her up and explained all about the hussy getting served shitty yogurt parfait in bed on this “surprisingly” extended business trip.

Shame she’d get fired for doing that. She’s still going to bill Room 125 for something extra at checkout. Maybe a few hours of porn-o-vision. Maybe a long-distance call. Maybe something out of the mini-bar or a stolen towel. He’ll pay for it, because any fuss he kicks up could point the missus to the skank.

Cindy’s got options.

Room 427 doesn’t have options, though. Room 427 wishes she’d never had those kids. Room 427 wishes the hotel carpet would open up and swallow the one playing games on the phone, the one hitting her brother and the one crying about getting hit. 

Room 427 ran out of options when she ran out of birth control.

Look at her. Hardly slept a wink, you can tell. Maybe three minutes from grabbing that phone, marching those kids back upstairs with an empty threat that doesn’t fool anyone. Sure, they won’t go to the show they specifically traveled to see. Right. Room 427 is definitely regretting her life choices.

Not much Cindy can do for her except delete the charge for the noise complaint against Room 428, which is the adjoining room where the older two brats are stashed. Poor Room 427. 

Room 331a and 331b aren’t regretting shit, though they’ve clearly made some regrettable life choices. Just look at their hair. That’s why you take that shit to a salon instead of bleaching it yourself with a cheap box of Bimbo-matic, a shower cap and a bottle of wine.

They hate each other passionately, maybe even sabotaged each other’s hair, but damn, do they play the bestie part well. Matching outfits, identical chemically burned bed-head, like, omg, how cute is this little muffin? Take a picture, and then another picture, and then a third picture. Then: which filter looks best?

Cindy can’t even place what exactly it is that tips her off to them, but it’s there. They’re on a girls’ trip out, seeing the sights, maybe booked this vacay in advance, before one of them stole the other’s boyfriend or ran over the other’s dog or wore the same dress to a party but not on purpose.

And hey, in comes Room 518, like he wasn’t causing a drunken disturbance a few hours ago yelling about some guy climbing up past his window. Because guys usually climb up buildings in the middle of the night, all the way up on the 5th floor.

Looks like the coffee did wonders for him, though. Or the shower. Maybe he doesn’t even remember seeing anything.

Or maybe he’s going to complain about it again, like the jerk from Room 209 who ruined Cindy’s morning bitching about an elevator being busted instead of just putting in a maintenance request and politely going about his own morning.

If she wouldn’t definitely get fired for it, she’d add elevator repair charges to Room 209’s bill. It’s assholes like Room 209 that make working in customer service suck.

### Brandon the intern

**—Washington D.C. | Thursday, 31 May 2012 | 8:15 a.m.—**

Brandon is just shy of bored when there’s a knock at the door finally, maybe more of a scuffle, and Waldroup’s aide goes to open the door. He only gets a brief look at Parsons over Tyler’s shoulder as the door opens to let Parsons in. 

Or when the door opens to let in what Brandon assumes is Parsons.

He only gets a brief look because after that brief look, he’s too busy clawing at the window behind him and trying to get the damn thing to open while Tyler starts screaming and Waldroup dives under the desk.

Because _what’s left of_ Parsons is Awful. If Picasso had made actual messed up people instead of messed up paintings of people… Or if he’d taken an actual person and turned him into a messed up scramble… Or if someone’s whole face went into a garbage disposal… Or—

The window won’t open. It’s maybe not even meant to open, just like Tyler had said. It’s probably locked and the lock is afraid it’ll be rearranged like Parsons’s _face_ and _chest_ , and so it’s hiding.

Parsons falls with a thump onto the floor, followed by another thump as Tyler hits the floor, and then a thud as the door closes, and then a click as the door _locks_ , and then a k-chunk-shing as he doesn’t even know what because he’s got his eyes on the window and his fingers on the windowsill and _it won’t open_.

He’s going to die. Here in this hotel where enough shady shit goes down to drown out the whole damn sun. People are going to remember this. People are going to read all about this. His _ma’s_ going to read all about this. He’s going to end up in the papers for all the wrong reasons.

His obituary’s going to be _exciting_.

Oh _fuck_ , and it’s going to _hurt_.

### Paul at the hotel coffee bar

**—Washington D.C. | Thursday, 31 May 2012 | 8:15 a.m.—**

Today is the day he’s going to do it. Today is the day. He’s asking her. He is. Today.

Just as soon as there’s a break in the customer line and he’s finished wiping down the counter and refilling the sugar packets. Just as soon as she’s not answering the phones or checking out a guest, or arranging a service call with the elevator repair guys.

He’s chickened out enough. The time for chickening out is over, though. 

Today feels like a special kind of day. It’s like there’s some sort of electric anticipation in the air, and no, that’s not just because he’s been sampling the wares and has more espresso in him than is healthy. 

He and Cindy are made for each other. He and Cindy will have a beautiful wedding and beautiful babies and a beautiful life together. Maybe a white picket fence. Maybe not. Maybe a dog. Maybe not a dog. Maybe a cat.

Cindy doesn’t look like a cat person. She doesn’t really look like a dog person, either, or a baby person. Or a marriage person.

But he and Cindy can be beautifully single together, without any pets at all, and without any fences, picket or otherwise, of any color.

Just as soon as he asks her out.

Today’s the day for it. Today is a special day. He’s going to remember today. Cindy’s going to remember today.

They’ll remember it as the day he asked her out and they got together.

### Brandon the intern

**—Washington D.C. | Thursday, 31 May 2012 | 8:30 a.m.—**

The corner isn’t going to save him from the fucking ninja busily painting all the walls red. 

The window failed him and the corner doesn’t stand a chance of doing better. But if he’s backed into a corner and folded up as small as he can get, then at least the ninja can’t tear a rib right out of his back like he did to Tyler. Not without turning him around first.

The corner won’t save him, and the desk didn’t save Waldroup, either. The ninja just hauled him out from under it. The ninja will probably just haul _him_ up out of this corner next. When he’s through with Waldroup.

He’s just an intern. He’s just— He’s in _school_ , he’s just a student, he’s just a kid, he’s too young to—

Something fleshy and wearing a starched sleeve slaps the wall beside him and he moans low and whining into his hands. There’s an arm. Bounced off, flopped onto the carpet in front of him, slick and shiny where the shoulder joint should probably be.

The bile in his throat wants to join his pathetic moan, but retching could draw the ninja’s attention, and that could make him next. He swallows it down and tries to hold in another whimper in a long string of sounds that are getting harder to choke back.

There’s a gun partway across the room. Tyler had pulled it, hadn’t he? When he first opened the door and what was left of Parsons fell through? An image flashes across his mind of himself, slipping over to the gun, picking it up, pointing it at the ninja, pulling the trigger. Saving his own fucking life.

A much clearer image flashes across his mind right after that one, of the ninja deciding that he can skip ahead to the front of the line for daring to point a gun at him, of it being the last thing he does before he’s in more pieces than Waldroup is in.

Anyway, he’d have to get to the gun first, and the ninja is in the way, ripping out pieces of Waldroup that Brandon can’t even name anymore. He thinks some of those pieces are bits of liver. But what’s a kidney look like? What’s a pancreas look like? He was in student government, not the anatomy club. Political science, not science-science.

He’s probably going to find out, though. He’s going to see his own kidneys get launched at the walls, going to get his own pancreas ground into the carpet under a combat boot, going to be emptied out like a suspicious suitcase getting tossed by airport security.

This is not what he wants to be famous for.

### Jordan with hotel security

**—Washington D.C. | Thursday, 31 May 2012 | 8:30 a.m.—**

“I’m telling you,” Jordan barks into the comm, “the tape is blank!” 

It’s not blank, exactly, but it might as well be. It’s stuck on the same loop of footage, a nice empty corridor, bland hotel carpet, doors to either side of the hallway, not a thing out of the ordinary… except that there’s no one walking down the hallway. No hotel guests, no housekeeping, no nobody.

Also, it’s still dark out in the window at the end of the hallway, and the sun’s been up a while now.

“It can’t be blank, Roberts. The coffee boy went up there, and at least two others after him.” The comm crackles a bit. “Check it again.”

“I _have_ checked it again.” Jordan gives the desk a frustrated thump. “It’s the same bit, on loop. Maybe 30 seconds of play time. I looked at the stuff before it, too. Nothing.”

Jordan watches the monitors where the other two are heading up the stairwell to the fifth floor. The far elevator to that whole wing is busted. Complaint got put in by some grumpy prick in 209 that morning, upset he had to take one whole flight of stairs or else walk around to the central elevator.

Svenson and Harwick are in there, climbing the stairs and sweeping their path, proper technique and everything. He can see them on the screen—Svenson’s been practicing, or at least watching the right kind of movies. 

But when they leave the stairwell, are they going to disappear? Is the camera shorted out somehow, hacked somehow, what?

And what are they walking into? Harwick’s some kind of fancy ex-military type, sure, STRIFE or something. STRAFE. Something appropriately all-caps and violent. 

But Svenson? He and Svenson are just regular guys. Didn’t even try to be real cops. Hotel security guard just paid better than nightclub bouncer. And this hotel sees some fun shit go down on top of the usual traveler drama.

Most of the fun shit comes out of the top floor, the 500s, the political rooms. That whole floor is set up for “meetings” with a bigger desk, more chairs, and some pretty beefy security structures in place. Bulletproof windows, silent alarms, reinforced doors. Anyone can book the upper 500s if they specifically ask for the room, but the lower 500s are reserved for government business. Paperwork. Deals.

Yeah, that’s the official story. Unofficially, there’s also a lot of “paperwork” that gets done between a totally different kind of sheet, and some of those “deals” come down to get a drink at the bar between clients.

In that respect, it’s not so different from the night clubs, except for the added security. Like the soundproofing and the silent alarms.

Room 502 sent out a silent alarm. There’s something going on up there, something bad, because that alarm got pressed and held long enough there’s not even a chance it was by mistake. The desperation was obvious.

On the monitor, Svenson and Harwick open the stairwell door, cautiously. Jordan watches them do it, waits for them to show up on the next monitor over, where the empty hallway before dawn is still stubbornly showing. Then they step out into the hall with a curse, the door to the stairwell shuts, and they disappear from the monitors entirely.

“What is it?” Jordan asks.

Svenson’s comm squawks. “You can’t see this shit?”

“I told you! The camera’s busted. It’s not picking up anything but an empty hallway.”

“Get Sitwell on the phone,” comes Harwick’s growl. “We need a STRIKE team, stat.”

### Brandon the intern

**—Washington D.C. | Thursday, 31 May 2012 | 8:45 a.m.—**

Oh god, oh god, please.

The ninja’s got a grip like iron, and it’s like in a movie. Brandon’s toes aren’t touching the floor anymore and the ninja’s not even straining to hold him up by the front of his shirt. Because the funky robot arm with the star on it is an actual funky robot arm.

It’s like a movie and the movie is Terminator and he’s going to die.

Every instinct he’s got is screaming at him to beg for his life, to tell the ninja he’s just a kid, shouldn’t even be here, doesn’t want to do politics after all, won’t stop the machine uprising, just wants his ma for fuck’s sake… 

But it’s like his lungs won’t work, his mouth won’t work, his brain won’t work, and all he can do is try to hold his hands over his face so he doesn’t have to actually _see_ his spleen go flying.

His ears don’t work, either. Because there’s not a sound as the handle of a knife, all hard and slick with blood, presses against the inside of his wrist and nudges his hand to the side—nudges, like it didn’t take any effort at all, and it probably _didn’t_ because this guy’s like evil black-ops Superman and this is the end—

Brandon looks—

Into a blood-splashed face that isn’t a face, maybe a foot away and somehow staring, eyeless, into his soul. Into black-lensed goggles that reveal nothing, no soul, no eyes, no brows, no nothing. 

Into a metal and leather mask that hides any noses or mouths or jaws that might be there. 

Into dark hair flecked with bits of dead people Brandon doesn’t want to identify because if he pukes in the ninja’s face, then his death’s going to be so much slower and more painful.

After the planet goes around the sun a few times and the universe dies of heat death and starts over again, the ninja drops him.

He hits the floor hard, ass-first because he’s too rubber-legged and floppy to try to catch himself or brace himself at all. And all he can see as the ninja steps back is the bloody tac boots, the red-smeared pants with the leather straps and the knives and the scraps of flesh clinging to one of the buckles.

And further up, the belt that has more knives and other things he can’t place. The leather everywhere with all the blood and the straps and how are there even more knives? And the robot arm flashing as it moves with the fingers twirling—oh god—twirling the knife that’s going to _end_ him. 

Except the knife goes into the top of the desk, instead, with a splintery crack that makes Brandon flinch and bury his head in his arms and sob quietly.

There’s more splintery cracks, more lines being hacked into the desk and bits of wood being carved out, and thank god it’s not him, not yet, just the desk so far.

Something heavy thuds against the door, but the door doesn’t give. More ninjas, probably, coming to finish what this ninja got distracted from.

Then plaster and chips of wood rain down on Brandon from above, where the ninja slips his knife into the window casing he’s cowering under, carving up the wall around the window instead of the top of the desk.

More thuds from the door, indistinct yelling, but the ninja doesn’t seem to care. He just puts a hand where the knife was and tears the whole window out of the wall with a metallic whir that’s the first and only sound he’s made.

When the door finally does burst inward and wobble unevenly on the heaps of flesh that had been Parsons and Tyler, and probably some of Waldroup, Brandon doesn’t even look up or unfold from his huddle. It doesn’t matter. What’s he going to do? Resist rescue? Put his hands up?

The cops just yell about where the ninja is, where he’s gone, how he got out, something about a strike.

Brandon feels like _he_ is maybe going to go on a strike. He’s going to strike, yeah. If he walks out of _this_ somehow, then he’s walking out of this whole internship. He won’t even bother with a sign or a slogan. 

He just wants out.

### Brock

**—Washington D.C. | Thursday, 31 May 2012 | 9:00 a.m.—**

Sitwell holds the phone to his ear and looks across the desk at him, grim but thoughtful as he takes the report. It’s a familiar look. Pretty much everyone’s wearing grim-but-thoughtful these days. Especially the higher-ups.

And who can blame them? When the boss goes down as hard as Pierce did, everyone else knows they’re fair game, at least until they can bring their wayward asset back in line. 

But after they bring it in, when they’ve taught the wretched thing its catechism over again, drilled its lessons into it until it wishes it could beg and plead… When they can relax and celebrate and have some fun with it…

The things Brock wants to do that little shit. 

All this upheaval, all this fear in the ranks, all this putting other ops on hold while they scramble to clean up the mess. Order comes through pain, and that thing’s going to _suffer_ until everything in this organization is neatly arranged again, from the ground up. It’s going to suffer for months. For years if he has anything to say about it.

Oh, it’s going to suffer. And _he’s_ going to see to it. 

Brock isn’t playing the “I’m invincible” game, because that kind of hubris gets your teeth knocked out and your dick flayed, apparently. But he stands a hell of a better chance than Pierce did, because he’s younger, stronger, quicker, and meaner. 

Mean enough the asset will think twice. 

Pierce might have resorted to a taser rod when his dick got tired, but _he_ never turned it _on_. Brock, though.

He’s no operator, and being the head of STRIKE Alpha only gets you so many privileges above and beyond what the other agents get. Only so many extra turns with the asset when the time comes to issue a few dozen reminders of its place. 

But despite that, he’s burned in that thing’s hide right alongside the higher-ups, because it’s not the number of turns you take, it’s what you do with your turns. And Brock? He makes every turn _count_.

“Well?” he finally asks, once Sitwell hangs up the phone and leans back in his chair with a pensive smile that’s an answer in and of itself.

“Harwick. He’s miffed he wasn’t briefed, but that’s no matter.” Sitwell waves a dismissive hand about that, and his smile widens. “What does matter is that _it took our bait_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dun dun _dun!_


	7. Natasha | Tell it like it is

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title comes from [“Tell it like it is”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ImmhkRMWN4) by Tracy Chapman.
> 
> Tiny content warning in end notes, but if you are this far in, you probably won't need the content warning. Still, better safe than sorry.

**—Airspace over Philadelphia | Thursday, 31 May 2012 | 9:00 a.m.—**

Natasha fans her cards out and waggles them at Clint with a teasing smile, secure in the knowledge that no one is behind her and the angle is wrong for a reflection off the jet’s window to give her cards away.

There’s something to be said for taking a window seat, and that something is not always “why have you made such a careless mistake.” Sometimes—times like these, when you’re flying with allies you can trust on one of said allies’ private jets, and the sun is shining just so at your back—that something is more in line with satisfaction at choices well made.

It’s only been about half an hour, but the flight’s been smooth despite the summer storm that blew in beneath them, and even Clint is caffeinated heavily enough to be able to do his part on the camaraderie front. She’s glad. It’s been a bad few nights for him.

“Well, come on, then,” she says.

Clint purses his lips in a side-facing duck pout and studies his own hand with the air of a man who doesn’t think he’ll win and doesn’t care that he’ll lose, but still wants to pretend otherwise. “Got any threes?”

Natasha grins. “Go fish!” 

It’s an objectively stupid game, but it passes the time nicely, makes minimal demands of its players, and affords countless opportunities to crow about low-stakes wins and bemoan low-stakes losses.

Also, Rogers knows the rules already.

Knows the rules, and is clearly used to playing with someone cheating as flagrantly as Natasha has been. He’s not cheating, himself, per se, but she can feel his attention and his amusement every time she slips herself another card. Probably one of his Commandos was a card shark. She wonders which one.

“Come on, big guy,” comes the other main reason for playing a game that doesn’t require much of an attention span, “you’re missing out! There’s some serious stuff going on— Did I say serious? I meant fun stuff, math stuff, brain workouts to be had, I swear I’m not— I am _not!_ We could really use your help, couldn’t we?” 

Stark, who is maybe _too_ -heavily caffeinated, holds out the phone to the group of them gathered around the little pull-down table and raises his eyebrows expectantly.

“We could really use your help,” Natasha parrots back in time with Clint.

“Well, we _could_ ,” Rogers murmurs more sincerely, either not getting the joke or not caring to participate. “Also, it’s your turn, Tony.”

Stark tucks the phone between his ear and his shoulder and scoops up his facedown stack of cards. “I’m telling you, there’s lot of things you’d be able to contribute beyond destroying the Washington Monument in a bright green reenactment of King Kong. Speaking of which, Rogers, king me.”

Yeah, he’s going to get far with Banner taking that approach. But better him flubbing it than her visiting another jungle village. They’re on much better terms these days, she and Banner—actually on terms instead of never having met—but she can do without the reminder.

Rogers reaches over from the other window seat and passes two kings to Stark, laying them down rather than holding them out, his expression silently conveying his own doubts about Stark’s diplomatic strategy.

“Don’t you want to be part of the club?” Stark adds the kings to his own and drops the four of them on the table. “We’re making a club. Very exclusive. Club Avengers. Can’t even pay to join, invitation-only. Charlotte’s Web, threes, nope, go fish.” 

Before she can even open her mouth to confirm that she still has no threes, he plucks a card from the draw pile, adds it to his own hand, sets his cards face down, and resumes his meandering up and down the aisle of his jet.

That’s one way to end a turn. She’ll allow it, if only because he actually volunteered to try to convince Banner to come back Stateside and join the latest adventure. Take one for the team, get to mentally check out of Go Fish—or socially check out; he’s paying attention to their cards on some level. Seems fair, either way.

Rogers collects Clint’s threes and fives, Natasha’s ill-gotten aces, and—when Stark meanders back their way—Stark’s eights and tens, looking every inch the innocent, earnest paragon of virtue when he’s clearly got another side. It’ll be fun learning his card-counting tells.

“—four of us, what with Greased Lightning roaming the universe playing ‘Oh brother, where art thou.’ That’s no good, who’s going to be our tie-breaker? We need a tie breaker, you know Itsy-Bitsy cheats and Robin Hood’s not any different, and you’re _great_ at breaking things, just look at Harlem and—”

Stark stops by the empty seat next to her, gives his phone a scandalized look, and then drops down into the seat. “He hung up on me.”

“I can’t imagine why,” Natasha murmurs. She gives it another three attempts before Stark makes any headway—that, or a development that’s more scientifically interesting and less death-and-mayhem. 

In the meantime, she’ll just take the three queens Rogers has gathered, add a fourth from her sleeve to make a set, and start picking cards off of Stark.

Sure, it’s not the best use of the next hour or so, but it’s by far not the worst.

* * *

“We’ve got another one,” Hill says on the speaker about half an hour later, skipping over the “hellos” and straight on to the business. 

“Fresh,” she adds. “Sitwell’s already got a STRIKE team onsite, but we need you to check it when you land.”

Stark eyes his third donut, raspberry jelly-filled and pinched between thumb and forefinger. “How fresh are we talking?”

Natasha can see the debate playing out in his head: eat this third donut and possibly see some things that bring all three donuts back up, or put the donut down and hope the other two stay put.

Natasha doesn’t blame him. The Soldier’s been making some very big messes. She does question the point of having a whole STRIKE team onsite, though. Why? If the Soldier’s done what he came to do, then he’s long gone.

“I’m sending you the details,” is all Hill has to say. “Agent Rumlow’s heading up that team. He’ll finish briefing you when you arrive.” The connection drops, and they must be scrambling if Hill doesn’t have more time to field preliminary questions.

That, or Hill is trying to give them as much time with the data as she can without a potential third party listening to their deliberations. A head start on drawing their own conclusions before Rumlow’s STRIKE team joins in and maybe tries to steer them in a predetermined direction.

What is Nick playing at? Where are the boundaries between the compartments on this mission? And which compartment is she in—are _they_ in, all of them on this jet, her new team? Rumlow’s heading up _that_ team, Hill said. Not _the_ team. Isn’t the first time she’s part of a team within a team, and it’s hardly going to be the last.

Natasha sits back in her seat, keeping her composure despite the way her face wants to pull into a sour expression as she considers Rumlow. STRIKE Alpha. He’s not the most pleasant operative to work with, but he _is_ one of the more efficient team leads, with one of the more enthusiastic teams. That might prove to be detrimental rather than beneficial.

She supposes it could be worse. She’ll take ruthless and straightforward over incompetent and manipulative. And they weren’t too much trouble last month, in any case. Were almost polite, even, aside from that little confrontation over Loki and the Tesseract where no one got what they wanted except Loki himself.

That little debacle can be chalked up to bureaucratic dick-measuring, though. Pierce had had a point, even if Thor’s point had made more common sense. And Pierce had a World Security Council to answer to, so it might not have even been _his_ point he was making, but theirs. They’d been pretty set on nuking the City, too, so appeasing them had some merit, if only to prevent further disaster.

There’s a quartet of chimes as the files arrive, and Natasha taps her tablet to open them as she mentally prepares herself for another set of blood stars and all the dread that follows in their wake. All the scene photos she’s looked in the last day, and those stars still catch her breath.

But these aren’t… They’re not bad, exactly. It’s not tongues in milk glasses, or piles of carved up human stuffed in a tiny motel closet. Though it _is_ piles of carved up human. Pulled apart, mostly, with only a few smooth edges from the knife. 

And a whole window torn out of a wall. Proof enough that it’s the Soldier, even without the blood star. Which is absent, it seems. 

There’s _a_ star, but it’s carved into a desk, and not a person. And it’s just wood, though the grooves do hold some traces of blood. Why didn’t he paint the star? He’s carved it in flesh or painted it elsewhere with blood, but not—

Ah, there it is. 

Natasha pauses on the image of the elevator. _There’s_ the blood star, on the elevator doors. And a pile of human chunks. An open briefcase with bloody papers. A pen sticking out of an eye socket. Nice touch.

“Wonder what color the carpet was in there before our psycho hopped in and said hi,” Stark mutters.

“Or the walls,” Clint adds, swiping through the pics. “Ceilings. He’s getting amazing coverage.”

Stark shakes his head. “Jesus.”

Rogers, she notes, is silent as he peruses the files, his posture neutral and his expression shuttered. Maybe the information they have so far is as straightforward to him as it is to her. Maybe not. It’ll be interesting to see what he comes up with. He’s already surprised her a few times.

But whatever surprises Rogers has in store for her, there are only two surprises in the file, as far as she’s concerned.

If the interview notes are correct, a Charlie Forester from Room 518 saw the Soldier’s approach _and lived to report it_. That’s unexpected. If Forester had seen the Soldier climbing, why had the Soldier not _done_ something about that?

And another someone survived, as well. An intern following Waldroup and learning the political ropes. Brandon Davis. Not a bystander left alive in a parking garage or a shitty motel, but someone actually involved with the group of targets. Someone who should have died, but didn’t get so much as a scratch.

Everything else seems fairly standard, at least for this new flavor of hit. Infiltrate from above, slice through the target, make a mess, get out again. So he bypassed the security cameras? Of course he did. The Soldier is that good. So he timed it such that no one would be in the hallway until he was done? Naturally.

“Okay,” Stark says with a flutter of fingers. “So the gist of this is our guy scaled a building while it was still dark out, got in the elevator shaft from the roof access, lurked around for a few hours until the right guys got in, and then went apeshit on them, painted the whole town red.” 

Stark looks around. “Right? And jammed the elevator, probably before he went to work on, uh…” He looks down, checks the names. “Parsons and Schueler.”

Clint shrugs. “So far, so normal.” He spins a card diagonally on the table like a top, flicking one side while holding a fingertip to the top corner. “If I was going to wait in an elevator and ambush some guys, I’d get there from the roof, totally.”

Natasha waits for the hesitation, the slight hunch to his shoulders, the drop of his eyes to the card—his distraction, his escape route, the place he can put his attention so that he doesn’t have to see the accusation in the eyes of others. 

But there is no accusation here, and he doesn’t look down or withdraw. She has to hope that means he’s coming back around, feeling like he can open up a bit. Can own his skill set without dwelling on how he had been forced to use that skill set against them.

“I mean, none of this is outside his new norm,” Clint continues. “And he used to make his kills long distance before he freaked out and changed tactics. Death from above, death by remote control from a mile off, death from a trap set up yesterday or a poison planted two weeks ago.” 

Clint looks over at her and raises his eyebrows, purely for show because she told him the ghost story years ago and he knows full well he’s right. “Right?”

Natasha nods, playing along for the others. “That was the MO, yes.” She elaborates for their benefit, just in case they need to hear this again to take the situation as seriously as they need to. “You’d never see him coming, and you’d be dead before you had a chance to see him leave. His specialty is getting in and out without detection, silent as fog, like he wasn’t even there.”

“I don’t mean to question your information,” Rogers starts, obviously about to do just that, “but given all of _this_ —” he gestures at the tablet “—all his hits this past month, I’m just having a hard time seeing _this_ killer plan something out and have the patience to wait. Or to feel satisfied with a long-range kill.”

“Yeah, going to agree with Cap on this one.” Stark’s mouth twists like he hardly believes the words coming out. “This guy has _no chill_. He’s got impulse-kill and ‘this is personal’ written all over. Compared to your Soldier, it’s like he looks the same but his insides were replaced with—”

Stark’s eyes flick to the side, looking out the window by Rogers’s head for a moment as he gesticulates. Maybe rethinking his words? Odd. She wonders what’s prompted that. 

“It’s a big behavioral shift, is all,” Stark continues, starting again from a different place with a bit of effort. “A huge change. This is like New Year’s resolutions on crack. New year, new me, but the high-octane born-again kind.”

“It _is_ the Winter Soldier, Stark.” Natasha eyes him coolly while he twirls a stylus between his fingers, wonders about this ever-so-slightly more thoughtful change on _his_ part, and then looks across the table to Rogers. “Even if the methods have shifted. Even if the hits are up close and personal. It’s him. I know it.”

Rogers nods, hitting that elusive flavor of sympathy that entirely avoids pity and stays firmly in the realm of solidarity. “The red star, the metal arm, the enhancements.”

“The _ruthlessness_.” Natasha detects a note of pride in her voice, but she doesn’t rein that in—they come from the same place, she and the Soldier, and it is and was a horrible place, but it produced some of the best this line of work has to offer. Why shouldn’t she be proud? Clint is not the only one here who needs to own his skill set.

“You’re right,” she says to Stark. “He has no chill. He’s never had chill, despite the code name. He’s got his targets, and he’s taking them out. Nothing will get in his way, nothing will stop him, and no one will catch him. Except us.”

Certainly not Rumlow and his STRIKE team. Not with her in this hunt.

Stark knocks the end of his stylus on the table and gets up to essentially pace in place, three steps one way, turn, another three steps, turn, repeat. “So we’re still going with rogue enforcer, and using that to explain the divergence in MO.”

She makes a see-saw gesture with one hand. “Yes, I think he’s turned on his handlers,” she says. “But no, I don’t know that it’s actually as much of a difference in method as it appears to be.” It’s frustrating, but something keeps telling her the differences are all surface level. She just can’t put her finger on why, or how.

“The Winter Soldier is ruthless above all else. And efficient. Unstoppable by external means, and unstoppable by anything like moral qualms. It’s part of why he’s so…” Terrifying, her mind supplies, but she won’t say that. “So legendary. And feared. And creative.”

She recalls one of the hits she had investigated after Odessa, one of those that weren’t attributed to him by most, but that she sees his hands on. 

“Working with his handlers, ‘ruthless, efficient and unstoppable’ looks like a shadow in a dark room that will snuff you out regardless of your security measures. Gets into any panic room, finds you anywhere on this planet, makes his hit and vanishes. It’s quick, clean, surgical.”

Stark flails his arms a bit. “And that _doesn’t_ sound like the polar opposite of hacking a man into pieces in a shitty motel room while a woman shrieks in the background and some little kid’s preparing for a life in therapy?”

Natasha meets Stark’s eyes and calmly shakes her head. “No. No, it doesn’t. The fear he inspired before was that he could be anywhere, everywhere, any time and every time. You’d never _see_ him coming, never _hear_ him coming, never escape, and it didn’t matter how good your security was.”

And that’s it. That’s what she’s been trying to put her finger on. “His targets,” she says, “were people who valued security and protection from the masses, who paid good money for the best that the best had to offer, whose greatest fears included the targets on their backs.”

Rogers nods. “So seeing their colleagues get assassinated despite the best of precautions would be terrifying, because it means their own precautions can never be enough. You think the methodology isn’t clean then and messy now, but more a case of fear-mongering then _and_ now.”

“Fear keeps people in line. Fear is an excellent motivator and deterrent. These are all things the Soldier’s handlers wanted.” She spreads her hands. “But quick, clean and surgical isn’t going to make S.H.I.E.L.D. sleep with the lights on and look over its shoulder.”

“That’s not scare tactics for someone like Fury,” Stark agrees. “That’s a resume with a sparkling cover letter. It’s just going to make Fury sit up all night drafting the perfect employment contract and then look around corners for the chance to get it signed.” 

Natasha shrugs. It’s not exactly how she was hired on—there was a bit more “eliminate her” and a bit less “recruit her” when Clint was sent out after her—but she won’t deny that plenty of other operatives came from shady backgrounds, and her ledger is not the only one steeped in red.

“S.H.I.E.L.D. thrives on secrecy,” Stark continues, “so make it _sensational_. Make it something so newsworthy that even S.H.I.E.L.D. can’t keep it under wraps.” He taps his stylus on his tablet more for emphasis than anything else. “Go after people associated with S.H.I.E.L.D. until S.H.I.E.L.D. itself is in the spotlight and can’t go hide in the shadows because the media won’t let it.”

“It’s plenty ruthless,” Rogers says. “It’s still unstoppable… And it’s incredibly efficient, in the long run.”

“Kill them fast _and_ kill them slow.” Stark slides into his seat when the final approach tone sounds, though none of them buckle up and the table stays down. “ _There’s_ the planning, and damn if it isn’t a long game.” 

He looks at them, mildly surprised. “You know, I’m actually impressed? This could be fun, and not just nightmare-inducing modern art.”

Not quite a safe approach for him to take. Underestimating the Soldier is how you die by his hands. Then again, so is everything else, if he’s coming for you. But while caution won’t save anyone, reckless abandon is worse. Time to tell it like it is.

“There was a hospital ward in Armenia that collapsed several years ago,” she says. “Purely structural damage. A flaw in the design. No one’s fault but the engineers who had failed to anticipate a particular stress fracture.”

Stark holds up a finger in recognition. “In Yerevan, right. Made the papers, even over here.” He pulls up an article and slides his tablet across to Rogers. “Helped start a war, even. Wait. You’re not saying…”

Natasha presses her lips into a line. She’d only looked into it because Vardan Sarkissian was on the Red Room list of “encouraged opportunities”—targets available to anyone in the program who came across the right opening, so long as it could never be traced back to them. She’d considered it before defecting, but Armenia hadn’t been in her travel plans.

“There was an inspection of the hospital security system a week before the collapse,” she says. “Prime Minister Sarkissian’s security staff insisted the hospital be checked out and cleared before Margarid Sarkissian arrived to deliver her baby.”

“Oh, I don’t like where this is going.”

Natasha gives Stark a minimal shrug. He’s the one who said he was impressed. He’s the one who has to know what kind of long-term thinking the Soldier is capable of. “An agent from a private security company, K. Arcturus, was on the hospital logs. Signed off on it. That security company was clean. Still is, last I checked. But they have never had a K. Arcturus on their roster.”

A whole week. He’d sabotaged the building itself to crumble a week after his visit, when the whole family was in position. He must have. Never see him coming, indeed. Because he’d often already been there and vanished before you got there yourself. 

“Maybe his handlers set it up for him and just sent him in to do the damage to the underpinnings.” Natasha pauses. “But I doubt that. That isn’t how it works in the Red Room. Too predictable. Different agents have different methods, different styles. There’s overlap, but lots of variety, too.”

“Makes sense. Keep it fresh.” Stark picks at the stitching on a bit of seat cover as they touch down with a bump and sudden rush of perceived speed that even a private jet doesn’t avoid.

Though a quinjet would, she thinks. She might insist on that if this mission takes them traveling again.

Clint starts packing away the cards. “If the handlers set it up, you can bet they’d have put him up on a roof opposite the hospital, either to snipe Sarkissian during the delivery or to take out the car on the way there or back.”

He taps the box to settle the cards before closing it up. “It’s the same wherever you go. Agents come in all kinds of creative flavors. Handlers, not so much. I’m betting they got him where he decided to go, and then turned him loose.”

Rogers frowns. “What exactly makes us so sure that’s not what’s happened here? Fury seems dead certain this is an attempt on S.H.I.E.L.D. by another organization.” He looks at Natasha. “You think he’s slipped his handlers and is working on his own.”

He puts the table up without remembering to fumble at it, and if he’s not more careful, someone else is going to pick up on the “lost in the future” act. “What if it’s both? What if some other organization scooped him up and this is all according to their plan? He decides _how_ , and they get him in position for it.”

Natasha considers it. There _are_ plenty of organizations out there that would jump at the chance to buy the Winter Soldier’s loyalty, or at least his compliance. But if he was ever out of the Red Room and on the market, S.H.I.E.L.D. would have been first in line, and she’s who they’d have sent to negotiate.

“Nat?”

“It’s possible,” she answers. “But it still feels personal. An organization like that is easy to predict, because they’re all run by the same kind of people. It’s the handler problem, like Clint said. They all have essentially the same goal, and it shows.”

Even S.H.I.E.L.D. Maybe even especially S.H.I.E.L.D. That’s why Nick called them in. Stark and Rogers aren’t on the S.H.I.E.L.D. wavelength, and she and Clint are creative operatives working as a team of two and answering only to Nick himself.

They can approach this from any direction. More importantly, they can approach it from many directions at once, even as a small unit. But STRIKE, even Rumlow’s Alpha team, are too aligned in their thinking, too much order, not enough chaos. And too… too much a part of S.H.I.E.L.D. Woven too strongly into the fabric of the organization to think counter to the organization itself.

She meets Clint’s eyes and sees the same thoughts there. He nods. He sees the separate lines, senses the compartmentalization of his op, agrees with it and with her.

“We can’t work with STRIKE,” she says, quietly enough to capture even Stark’s wandering attention.

Rogers nods once, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. “Agreed.”

“Agreed?” Stark looks between them all. “I know they’re assholes, but so are we. If we can’t work with them, why’d we hand over the scepter three weeks back? I could have been working on that. Banner and me. Team science. Think about what we’d accomplish!”

“This isn’t about the scepter, Tony,” Rogers says. “When Thor finds his brother, he’s heading straight to Asgard. With Loki, the Tesseract, _and_ the scepter.”

He looks at the rest of them in their huddle of four. “This is a team of six. Banner and Thor aren’t here at the moment, but Tony will keep working on Banner, and Thor _will_ find success and rejoin us. In the meantime, we keep our findings to ourselves, our theories to ourselves, and our plans to ourselves. Let STRIKE come to their own conclusions. And let’s hope we find this guy first.”

Clint seems to relax slightly, and Nat considers him for a moment. It’s been too long since they last really caught up. She’ll need to touch base with him when they get a moment. She’s got a feeling Clint’s been filling Rogers’s ears with the stuff no one else wants him to know. And she won’t be left out.

Rogers continues speaking. “I want to find this guy and stop him from killing people. If we work with STRIKE, only the first part of that is happening. This man has been used to kill hundreds of people and terrorize hundreds more. If S.H.I.E.L.D. gets their hands on him, nothing changes but the label on the tin.”

He looks at her with sympathy in his eyes, like he’s sure his words will sting and regrets that they’re still necessary words. “I’m sorry, Nat. But—”

“But nothing,” she interrupts with a fierce grin. “The Winter Soldier is a weapon, just like me, just like Clint. If S.H.I.E.L.D. can _get_ a weapon, S.H.I.E.L.D. will _use_ that weapon. So far, working with S.H.I.E.L.D. has helped me wipe some of the red from my ledger, true, but…”

But sometimes, she thinks, this job’s just another shade of red. And you can’t erase red paint with another layer of red paint. The Avengers, though. Led by someone like Rogers… 

It isn’t that she thinks Nick would understand if she shifted her loyalties. It’s more that she suspects he set it up for her. An out. A chance to do genuine good without a shadowy underbelly to keep hidden. A chance to avenge those she’s hurt without hurting others in the process.

“But I’m part of this team now, Rogers, and this team doesn’t hand over weapons like the Winter Soldier. We _stop_ them. Maybe…” 

She looks over at Clint, meets his eyes. _Pay it forward_. He was sent to kill her and he made a different call. She’s redeemable, and he saw that. So maybe… 

“Maybe we even _save_ them.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: Very brief mention of prior events involving hospital destruction and resulting harm to innocents, including pregnant women and children.


	8. Tony | Satellite (I’m watching you)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title comes from [“Satellite”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tqymo0sVUwE) by Nine Inch Nails.
> 
> Shockingly, I think there's no need for any content warnings in this chapter. Wow. But let me know if I'm guessing wrong and I'll add a note. ^_^

**—Washington D.C. | Thursday, 31 May 2012 | 11:00 a.m.—**

“Well that’s one way to open a window,” Tony says, poking a finger into the drywall and plaster crumbs that don’t quite manage to hide the reinforced concrete that had valiantly attempted to hold the window frame in place. 

“Remind me not to hand this guy a jar of pickles,” he adds.

Ripping a window like this one out of a _wall_ like this one would be an absolute cinch in the suit, but the suit has hydraulics and a borderline immovable center of gravity. Metal arm or not, enhanced or not, a person made out of organic squishy bits shouldn’t be able to get the leverage needed for this, even if the raw power was available in the arm.

Unless he maybe weighed a ton. Or unless his organic arm was used to push against the wall while the metal one pulled the window frame and said meat arm was somehow just as strong and durable as the metal one. And if said metal arm was anchored to the rest of him so well it wouldn’t just rip off at the shoulder. 

And to anchor something _that_ well would—

Eh. No. Shouldn’t actually be possible. Survivable. 

But he knows all about body mods that shouldn’t be survivable. And they’re totally possible to survive if you’re “lucky” and obstinately determined to survive despite the odds. All you have to do is scowl when life says “fuck you,” and then tell life, “no, fuck _you_.”

Anyway, “possible” itself doesn’t seem to matter anymore. Hasn’t mattered since aliens and magic glow sticks and puckered day-glo space sphincters.

He gives himself a little mental shake and retreats back to the current so-called impossibility, instead of the screaming outer space nightmare impossibility.

So it should be impossible to put together an organic set of circumstances where a man disassembles a steel-reinforced security wall, let alone avoids going splat when landing on the other side of that wall. 

Well, Tony’s built a misguided empire on doing impossible levels of damage, and there’s no reason to suddenly let impossible stand in his way now that he’s shifted focus to give peace a chance. 

Hell, peace _is_ impossible, when you get right down to it. But see if _that’ll_ stop him. He’s got to make up for his own legacy _and_ dear old Dad’s. Impossible? Never met her.

“What do you think, Spangles?” Tony asks, keeping his voice down to avoid being overheard by Rollins out in the hallway. 

He takes a little step to the side, trying and failing to ignore how his shoe squishes into the carpet that’s not technically _water_ logged but is red and juicy with something much worse than water. “Think you could rip this bad boy out easy-peasy like the kid says our killer did?”

Rogers gives the window frame a heft—and Jesus, look at those biceps; maybe he _could_ , maybe it wasn’t impossible at all, maybe it was just one of the things enhanced people _did_ , picking up three-foot panes of bulletproof safety glass bordered with steel and concrete like normal people picked up fancy plates at a home goods store.

“With one hand, no. Not _easily_.” He sets it back down—gently, like it was nothing, not a strain, not even a little heavy—and looks out the jagged hole in the wall with his hands on his hips. “But with both hands, probably.”

With both hands, probably. And not even boastful about it. Tony shakes his head. Super soldiers, man.

“Kid says he dug around in the drywall for a bit, probably to find the edge of the frame, and then just took the window out like you’d open a refrigerator door.”

“Well,” Rogers says under his breath, still surveying the trees lining the sidewalk below, like he’s uncomfortable talking about feats of strength. “Two hands on the window and a foot braced against the wall, and yes. A window like this would come out pretty quickly.”

Tony puts his back against the bit of wall by the window hole that’s both intact and not smeared with red. “Alright, then. So not pressed for time, not fleeing the scene, not scampering off lest he be discovered. Just moseying on out through the wall the way he waltzed on in via elevator shaft.”

“Looks like it.”

And you know, dear old Dad had nothing at all to say about pensive. Captain America wasn’t pensive, he was active. A man with a plan in name only—a man too busy _doing_ to plan a damn thing. Too busy breaking into an enemy factory with a few stage props to think about how he was going to get home afterward.

Also a man too busy with feats of valor to know his way around fondue—however you defined that—and that’s just _not_ the guy standing in the room with him. Though he doubts Rogers knows how to milk a “cheese fountain” for all it’s worth. Talk about your 90-year-old virgin.

But somehow not actually a boy scout, and not actually the quintessential action-man to the same extent he’d anticipated. 

Oh, he’ll leap around on the open-air platforms of a crashing helicarrier despite not having a prayer of achieving flight if he slips and falls, and he _did_ catch up to him and Thor mighty quick for a guy with a parachute instead of a magic hammer or a flight suit.

But for all that, it seems Cap really is a star-spangled man _with a plan_ , after all. 

“You’re thinking thoughts, Capsicle. Care to share with the class?”

Rogers frowns. “It’s been bothering me, actually. No one saw him leave. No one reported a man dressed in black with a black mask on, covered in blood and weapons, walking down the sidewalk.”

He points. “None of those trees are disturbed like a man landed in them. There isn’t any blood on the grass or sidewalk to show where he would have hit and rolled. There aren’t any balconies he could have jumped to or ledges he could have clung to on the way down.”

Rogers lifts a shoulder, and there’s an awful lot of polite what-the-fuck in the movement but not a lot of volume in his hushed murmur. “Where is the trail? He left one back there in the hallway, going from the elevator to this room, but not afterward. Why? How? It doesn’t add up.”

“Well, Itsy-Bitsy does think he’s made of smoke.” Oh shit, does this guy have robot wings to match his robot arm? Maybe an Inspector Gadget propeller hand? How awesome would that be? Not classy, not by a long shot. But nostalgia points through the roof.

Rogers shakes his head. “No, it’s just— No one happens to look just as he’s jumping out of a hole in the fifth-story wall, okay. It happens. But the cameras. The street cameras don’t pick him up, the security cameras in the hallway don’t pick him up. The cameras in the elevator don’t pick him up. Cameras don’t blink. How did they miss him?”

Is that a hint of jealousy in his voice? Is the great Captain America tired of the limelight? Getting mobbed for selfies and autographs? Being a household name? Interesting, for a guy with some serious—and seriously cheesy, ha ha, will fondue ever cease to be funny?—stage experience back in the day. 

Of course, Tony gets it. Being famous is a full-time job without vacation or sick leave. But Rogers had seemed more like the type to take one for the team when it came to being the front-runner and absorbing all the public attention. 

Guess even that gets old, despite the face staying young.

“How is he hiding in plain sight, looking like he does?” Rogers asks. “Black leather head to toe, knives everywhere, all the blood, the mask. A _metal arm_. How are people not _seeing_ him in person? How are surveillance teams not seeing him in traffic footage and shop cameras? How are cameras in general and cameras _designed for surveillance_ not picking him up?”

Yeah, definitely some envy. Guess that’s one more point for the good old days as far as Rogers is concerned. Or maybe the bad old days. How much does the future suck when seen from the to-him very recent past?

But it’s also a good point, and something that’s been working its way through the back channels of his own brain. 

Because there are a _lot_ of ways to fuck up surveillance equipment, but those ways tend to require advanced setup, expert hacking abilities, offsite backup teams… And their guy is working alone as far as they can tell, is from the ‘40s as far as Miss Rushman can tell, and didn’t have much setup at all for this other than breaking into the elevator access and waiting.

And there are other ways to get around surveillance, but they tend to leave broken and damaged surveillance equipment behind, or they bust all the other electronics in the area while they’re doing their thing to the electronics being targeted. And the cameras are all working fine now, none of the electronics in the area show any signs of a glitch—not even flickering lights—let alone the kind of electric carnage an EMP would leave behind.

The only thing about the surveillance that’s messed up is that the feed starts looping around 5 AM, plays exactly 33 seconds of the same footage for a few hours, and then jumps to the present day like nothing happened.

And that’s… That’s _fantastic_. That’s _glorious_. That’s _incredibly_ interesting, and this killer is a gift that keeps on giving.

What’s an enhanced renegade enforcer from the ‘40s doing with technology that slices out video feeds with surgical precision and then patches those feeds up with the same surgical precision? Is it a skill, is it an enhancement, is it the metal arm?

Tony’s money is on the metal arm. Specifically, on there being something in it or on it that jacks up electronics while not jacking up the arm’s own electronics. And he wants his hands on that so bad his fingertips actually itch. He can’t wait to get a few scans, poke around, study the inner workings.

Who made it, and when, and how? And who designed the surveillance blocker, and when, and how? He can get those answers if he can lay hands on the equipment itself. Read in the design and machining the signature of the engineer who fashioned it, suss out all the ways he can do it better. Because he can totally do it better.

“Part of the answer,” Tony says, “is that our guy’s a cyborg with an electronic masking device. Surveillance blocker, if you will.” A sweet, sweet, surveillance blocker in or on an even sweeter prosthetic that he can make three or four thousand times better once he gets a look at it. God, he loves a challenge.

“Fucks with the cameras once it’s in range,” he continues, “resets them all once it leaves. Maybe there’s an on-off toggle, maybe it’s just always doing its disruptive thing. Probably in his metal arm.”

Rogers shakes his head. “That doesn’t explain the people, and it doesn’t explain the satellites. You can’t possibly think outer space is within range.”

“I said part of the answer.” He’s already got JARVIS taking a look-see at satellite surveillance all over D.C., and if there are any blips or loops, they’ll be able to triangulate those to locate times and places their murder mystery is out and about, work toward a home base, maybe storm that home base. 

But only if outer space _is_ within range. Otherwise, it’s a long slog through city cameras, which JARVIS is also working on. They should have something to work with in a few hours, and then have everything by nightfall. Morning at the latest. 

“You want to know about the people part of that equation, you need to chat up a shrink. Or a spy.” Tony shrugs and puts on his best “underestimate me” diversion face. “I’m too self-centered and flamboyant to be either of those things.” 

Because the truth is, and all deflection aside, people see what they want to see, and no one wants to see death in tac boots closing in on them with blood-slicked leather and a sharpened arsenal. 

No one wants to see a little black murder cloud descending from a hole in the wall so high up that normal humans would go ahead and use a rope to rappel down or else break a few leg bones sticking the landing.

No one wants to see the “D.C. Slasher”—a truly ridiculous nickname, but what else can you count on the press for, though he has to admit they did pretty good with Iron Man—because almost everyone who does see him ends up in little bitty pieces, and the only people who have survived an encounter have been in dire straits to start off with… or have been innocents.

Because their killer has standards, looks like.

“Speaking of spies. Think Itsy-Bitsy and Junior Birdman are done with the kid?”

Rogers gives the street a lingering look, and then turns from the window. “Should be. Let’s hope they’ve got something.”

* * *

After a brief but heated debate, that evening sees the four of them sitting around a dining table piled high with Chinese takeout. 

There’d been an offer of S.H.I.E.L.D. housing before they finished up at the blood-spattered hotel, and wasn’t _that_ a laugh. As if he’d willingly go live in a shitty barracks bugged to high heaven and crawling with paramilitary. Or whatever apartment unit they’ve got reserved for this sort of thing, also no doubt bugged to high heaven.

Anyway, do they want their target thinking they’re rubbing elbows with the people he’s busily killing a nightly basis? No. No, they really don’t. Better by far to be obviously independent contractors when it comes to hunting him down. Not associated with S.H.I.E.L.D. more than necessary. 

Though being part of S.H.I.E.L.D. and also famous might be good for luring him in. Still, Tony’s not looking to be bait or a target of any kind. He’s done enough of that kind of thing to last him, though he hadn’t known it at the time. He’d rather be going after the killer than having the killer going after him. Because he’s sane, no matter what public opinion has to say about it. 

So no. No thank you to S.H.I.E.L.D. housing.

This cute little house Pepper dug up is way better—so fresh on the rental market that it’s not even official yet, and open to purchase offers and everything. He’s thinking he might buy it to have a place to crash in D.C. whenever he feels like slipping away with Pepper for something quiet. It’s roomy enough for the two of them, even if four Avengers is a tighter fit.

Tony scrapes out the last of the sesame chicken and tosses the carton at the trash can—score. “So we know where he got in, how he got in, when he got in, why he got in, who he got in to _get_ …” 

He looks around the table at the others. No one seems ready to challenge that point. So. Moving on. “Next up—surveillance.”

“There is none,” Nit-Nat says mid-swipe of her chopsticks and ignoring Barton’s indignant squawk as his egg roll—the last of its kind—is abducted. 

“Rumlow was very insistent that there is no footage of any sort to be seen, and that S.H.I.E.L.D.’s best resources had been poured into that effort and gotten nowhere.” She blinks, and that’s not creepy at all how she conveys nothing and everything in that blink. “It’s a dead end.”

“Tch. _I’m_ S.H.I.E.L.D.’s best resource on that front and no one’s said boo to me.” 

And Tony doesn’t believe in dead ends any more than the obnoxiously persistent Agent Agent does. And if Fury’s past predicts his future, that’s a man who doesn’t so much reject dead ends as line those dead ends with C4 and turn them into wide connecting streets.

Her smile is somehow both mild and sharp. “Which is interesting, isn’t it? They brought you on and haven’t said ‘boo’ to you about the tech.”

“We decided not to give them the inside track on our progress,” Rogers says, “and it looks like they came to the same conclusion.” 

He looks across the table. “Tony, keep on the surveillance angle. If they don’t want us getting there first, then we’re _going_ to get there first. I want eyes on this guy. Preferably from a safe distance to start out. I want to know what we’re up against, not just take someone’s word for it or follow along mopping up his messes.”

On the one hand, that’s an order, and ew. He doesn’t follow orders, just on principle. Unless there’s an alien army on-prem. That sort of thing requires teamwork, and he _is_ on a team. This team. 

Which leads to the other hand, where he already has some answers and has already been doing what Rogers is asking—yeah, he’s going to think of it like a request and not like Rogers is trying to take charge before they’re even on an exploding battlefield with aliens and nukes. 

A request like the one he made before they piled onto the jet, about puppets and how maybe he should be a little less of an asshole when he talks and go ahead and _not_ make comments about them when there’s a guy in earshot who was magicked into _being_ a puppet. 

And sheesh, when it’s pointed out like _that_ , albeit without the whole asshole thing, because this is still Captain America making the request and guy has a virgin tongue to go with his virgin ears… Yeah. That’s worth policing his metaphors. He’s an asshole, but he’s usually better at reading a room than he has been with Barton.

Tony taps a finger on the tablet screen by his elbow. “So far nothing on the satellite front, but JARVIS is making progress on the local cameras.” 

Of course, they took a little detour to hack into the NSA databases, but now they’re working with private cellphone footage and the whole nine yards, so never let it be said that Big Brother couldn’t be used for something good.

If they can pinpoint the pattern based on the last month or so, when this vintage murder puppet started pulling its own strings, then they can work backward, try to figure out where the mysterious Winter Soldier has been throughout the years by looking for similar localized blips around the world. Fun times.

But no, shit, there he did it again. No more puppet talk, not even to himself, because if there’s one thing he can be counted on—aside from brilliance and charm—it’s saying exactly what’s on his mind. 

And normally he’d take a kind of mischievous glee in discomforting those around him—defense mechanisms die hard—but, well, honestly, even without Mr. Rogers’s friendly neighborhood request, Pepper’s right: These people want to play nice with him, and he should play nice back. Could use the support. Can’t go through life with only Rhodey, Pep and Happy to count on.

Hell, he’d moved them all into his home—well, Pepper’s home, technically—and it’s high time to make some friends who won’t sell him to the Ten Rings or otherwise throw him under the nearest bus in a pinch. Something tells him that with these guys, he is not merely a golden goose.

When “watching a nuke explode a _very nearby_ alien spaceship in outer space with little to no chance of having your body returned to Earth for people to bury” shows up on the schedule, it’s nice to have friends around. So since his schedule now includes shit like that, he’d better make nice.

Also, Barton probably had a really shit time being a blue-eyed zombie, and not everyone deals with their bullshit by laughing at it and refusing to allow anyone—including themselves—to take it seriously lest it actually become serious and therefore a threat. Or, you know, trigger a heart attack.

Some people drown their bullshit in drip coffee and slap a band-aid on it, and some people knock the sand out of their bullshit in the gym, and some people hide from their bullshit in jungle villages, and some people… do… whatever Charlotte’s Web does. Knit, maybe. Weave. Crochet. Something spidery, probably. She’s got a theme to uphold, after all.

Tony tunes back into the conversation as the spider herself shakes her head sharply. Interesting. What’d he miss?

“—doesn’t _care_ how old you are if you’re in his way,” she says. “One of my Red Room sisters was that same age when she was gunned down, and let’s not forget the fiery crashes taking out whole families, or the hospital collapse, or any number of other hits.” 

Rogers raises his eyebrows at her, somewhere between exasperated and giving up. “You’re really not selling this man as a redeemable asset able to re-enter society once we can get him to drop his kill list, Nat.”

Natasha sighs. “I’m not… one _hundred_ percent sure he is. But I want to _try_. I want to _hope_ that he is.” She pokes at her noodles with her chopsticks for a moment. “I was. But we still have to be careful about it. Cautious. I just don’t want any of us to think he’s sparing women and children simply _because_ they’re women and children.”

Looks like he missed a fun debate. Oh well.

“He has other reasons for it,” she says, “and we need to keep our eyes open instead of thinking he’s got some kind of soft spot. The Winter Soldier is not soft, anywhere, for anything. The fact is that we don’t _know_ why he spared that intern. We can’t be sure why he spared any of the ones he has.”

“They’re not involved.” Barton slurps at the hot and sour soup, tipping the styrofoam cup up to drain it in a few gulps before wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “He’s killing the people on his list, and he _isn’t_ killing the people _not_ on his list.” He shrugs. “The kid wasn’t on the list.”

If it were anyone else, and if the bodies scattered along this trail had been in any fewer pieces this whole time, Tony might have been tempted to think the kid had been spared because the murderer had a soft spot for kids, sure. Or that he fell for some terrified puppy eyes, or even just ran out of time or preferred even numbers to odd ones. Regardless of Natalie’s warning.

But while “ran out of time” _is_ still an option he’s willing to entertain—SWAT wannabes busting down the door would be as good a reason to leave as any, if not a better reason than average—from what Barton and Natalie got out of the kid, their guy was nonchalant about the window. Not rushed. And had already dropped the kid, anyway. 

“What the hell kind of list does he have, then? Waldroup had half a dozen aides,” Tony says, waving his next bite of chicken for emphasis. “What are the odds that this one aide was on duty and the other five weren’t? Or are they _all_ on his hit list, and not just this Breckinridge guy?”

Tony frowns. “Hell, are _any_ of them on his list? How big is his list? Why does it have someone as influential as Pierce on it, and someone as low down as the night janitor working a Tuesday shift? Why bother going for an aide, anyway? And Waldroup isn’t even with S.H.I.E.L.D. He’s clearly the main target and he’s not even a contractor or a business associate.”

Barton reaches across the table to snag another carton of noodles. “Wow, it is just eating you up that we don’t have any answers, isn’t it?” 

“We have forty-plus data points that make _no sense together_ ,” Tony mutters. “Zero. Zilch. Nada. Now that’s a painfully small data set in most instances, but when it comes to ‘human beings turned into mulch in this city during the past month,’ that’s kind of a big number. Big enough to get _some_ answers out of.”

“We’ll figure it out.” Rogers dips a crab rangoon into into some sweet and sour sauce. “We’ve only been working on this for two days.”

“Might be easier to figure out if we were working _with_ STRIKE, much as I hate to say it.” Tony shrugs. “Not even with-with. Sitwell wants to chat you up tomorrow, and between you and Romanoff, someone’s gotta be able to find a sec to plug me in somewhere. I don’t want to work with the assholes. I just want to work with their sweet, sweet asshole data.”

S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn’t trust him near their equipment after he hacked what they had on the helicarrier, and that’s shockingly intelligent of them but also very inconvenient. But put Rushman in a room with that same equipment, and they’ll be watching her so closely they won’t notice Capiscle leaving a little somethin’ somethin’ behind.

Or better yet, carrying a little somethin’ somethin’ on his person. More than one way to swipe data, and what’s a little wireless credentials theft between friends? They’re all friends here, S.H.I.E.L.D. and STRIKE and the Avengers. Such good friends. Why else would they be called in to work this job?

“We already have _some_ sweet, sweet asshole data,” Barton mumbles around a bite of noodles. “Parsons and Schueler both worked with one of the dead agents a while back, whatsizname.”

“Hinklemeyer,” Rogers supplies. “And Marcy Lipmann, though she’s not dead yet.”

Emphasis on the “yet,” at the rate they’re going.

“Right.” Barton digs around for a shrimp buried in the noodles. “And Brekenridge worked with them, too, Waldroup’s assistant dude. So that’s three victims connected to S.H.I.E.L.D., one unaffiliated victim in the wrong place at the wrong time, and one random intern having a shitty day.”

They should have a whiteboard. He’s going to overnight a whiteboard so they can do this like on TV. The house isn’t wired for holotech, but if they’re going old school, they should do it right. Draw lines between victims in marker. Maybe some magnet pins and color-coded twine.

“What do we think about Waldroup being killed, then,” Rogers says. “Our unaffiliated victim in the wrong place at the wrong time. As Tony says, he has no direct connections to S.H.I.E.L.D., but he would supply the newsworthy element better than a lobbyist and two assistants would.” 

He turns toward Natasha. “Is that enough for motive where the Soldier is concerned?”

“Only if the congressman’s voting patterns fit the evil demographic, which they do.” She scoops out another serving of pepper steak with her chopsticks before passing the carton over to Barton to polish off.

Tony frowns into the last of his sesame chicken. Other than voting dirty and being tabloid-worthy, Waldroup’s got little to offer on the “might as well die” front, at least as far as their killer seems to be concerned. 

None of the things he’s rumored to be involved with have ever been successfully prosecuted, and forensics didn’t find anything to indicate a drug deal, domestic abuse, or any of the other things their killer’s civilian victims have had going on. His only connections are political ones, specifically _not_ S.H.I.E.L.D., and he’d be a pretty ineffective politician without those connections.

Though from what JARVIS has put together for them to supplement what Rumlow and Hill supplied, one of the bigger connections is between Waldroup and Stern. They’d worked together on the census a few years ago, drawn up the questions and whatever else. Had a few other committees they were on together. Went to the same country club.

And Stern’s a world-class asshole and wannabe technology thief still trying to get his grubby mitts on the Iron Man suit, even if less publicly now, but Tony’s betting _Stern_ isn’t what got Waldroup killed. 

_He_ might have a personal beef with Stern and find his policies objectionable and his personality deplorable, but his personal beef isn’t going to make their killer’s motive chart. Irritatingly, it’s still a toss-up, aside from S.H.I.E.L.D. connections and actively committing a crime against others, as to what it is that _does_ draw him in.

What’s it take, exactly, to catch this guy’s attention?

“Wait, so now you’re saying the ‘evil demographic’ includes politics? All the other non-S.H.I.E.L.D. victims were—” Tony pulls words from the air “—you know, in the process of _doing_ real live evil. In real time. Assaults and stuff.”

They look at him.

“What? Are we thinking he’s researching people’s voting histories and policy portfolios before deciding it’s acceptable to murder them?” Tony grabs the nearest carton and dumps some—looks like chow mein, that’s okay—onto his plate as he talks. 

“Or is he loosening up, or something, deciding it’s okay to cut people up if they’ve got a secondhand connection to S.H.I.E.L.D.? Because that’s going to be way harder to anticipate, and we’re already in the dark.”

Rogers shakes his head. “We’re still putting together a picture. We should know more tomorrow.”

Tony wants to know more right now, but he settles for a disgruntled perusal of JARVIS’s findings thus far—which are not nearly as robust as he’d like. 

“Speaking of,” Nit-Nat says. “If we’re still doing this in pairs, I should be the one to go with you tomorrow, Rogers.” 

“That’s fine,” he agrees.

She looks over at Tony next. “And maybe you have some toys we can leave behind.”

“Perfect, and _yes_.” Tony grins. He’s got the toys, alright. A whole envelope of little surveillance seeds for them to plant, and then it’s time to watch their garden of illicitly obtained S.H.I.E.L.D. data grow.

That’s a bit of gardening where he actually _likes_ getting his hands dirty.


	9. Interlude | Vengeance is mine, mine, mine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title comes from “[Vengeance Is Mine](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLr7rPN68zU)” by Alice Cooper.
> 
> Content warnings are in the end notes, but better safe than sorry, folks. Please do read them if you might need them; they’re really vague, so they won’t actually spoil you, but they’ll give you a heads-up as to what you should be prepared to encounter. I’m just putting them at the end in case anyone wants to wade in without caution.
> 
> Last chapter was a fluffy bunny. This chapter is _not_.

**—Washington D.C. | Thursday, 31 May 2012 | 7:45 p.m.—**

It breathes softly into the thick leaves of the shrubbery and watches the people move through the parking lot, watches them shuffle along the sidewalk, watches them shift from foot to foot as they wait in the clump at the entrance with their black plastic blocks in their hands—not phones, something else that lights up at random and prompts them to go inside. 

They are all of them waiting. The herd of people in the lamplight. The asset in the shadows. Waiting, waiting.

The seconds slip past into minutes, and minutes drip down into puddles while one by one, the black plastic blocks light up red, flash, vibrate. Every time, a pair or a trio or a small group of the people break off from the clump and go inside to hand over the plastic and follow another person to a table.

It does not have long to wait, and neither does the researcher. Not much longer at all. The time is right, the place is right, the day is right. This is the stillness before a strike, the lull, the stretched out moment when anticipation shakes its way slowly into satisfaction.

The researcher will be here. It is Thursday, and the researcher is predictable—has made a reservation. The researcher was _always_ predictable, prefers to make others wait instead of waiting himself. 

Some things have changed since the researcher last laid hands on it, last laid the scalpel across its flesh, last laid it out bare and open and bleeding: The researcher is old now, older, wrinkled, unsteady on his feet. 

Some things have changed—but this has not: If there is a pattern, the researcher will follow it. Mostly the pattern is this: Duty—that is, data—before anything else.

Get the numbers, then have the fun. Numbers first, always. Numbers so that the data is clean, so that the data can be used, so that the data can inform the next visit, next experiment, next session. You can have it when I’m through. Put your dick away and wait your turn. 

Always making others wait.

Data is in the blood. Data is in the muscles. Data is in the bones. Data is broken open, sliced apart, poured out. Data is taken out and the empty places left over are new holes in it for the others to push into when they are done waiting, new tears in it for the others to rip wider with their eager fingers, or their white electric fire batons, or their dicks.

But no one can get the numbers, now. No one can have the fun afterward, now. It is the one leaving holes and empty places in the flesh, leaving bones in pieces, leaving blood in the cracks of the floors and the pocks of the ceiling panels and everywhere in between.

Now, _it_ is the one getting the numbers, having the fun.

And now the researcher will provide the data instead of extracting it. It is the researcher’s turn, and the researcher is predictable. Two full weeks, most of a third, the researcher has been predictable.

Monday, go to the bingo hall, sit at the table, say meaningless things to wrinkled women. Smile. Wait for the day the announcer calls certain squares in a certain order. For the day it is time to pay others of his kind a visit, for the day it is time to show the asset where _they_ are so that they can take their turns, too.

A man in an apron filled with silverware and straws approaches the window, flips the latch, lifts the pane, lets the night air in, lets the food smells out. Lets the noises out, lets the conversations out, lets the rowdy cheers and whoops of the young men in the other corner out as they cheer for something on a glowing screen it knows better than to look at. 

Glowing screens are not for assets to look at.

Tuesday, go to the dead drop, check for the flag, there is no flag, there is no message, there is no news, there is no call to re-enter the field, to provide guidance, to analyze findings, to cross-reference the data. There is no signal from the operator. The operator is dead, dead, dead.

The researcher is shown to a table, no waiting. He made reservations. Reservations mean no waiting. 

It is the table by the window, the same table as last week. Predictable. The researcher tells the woman in the apron with the pen and paper and straws in the pocket what he wants to eat and tells her to change one of the channels. Predictable. The woman touches the nearest glowing screen and goes to tell the kitchen what food to prepare.

Wednesday, go to the— 

“Fury, Direc—” 

The— 

“—tor of the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division, or S.H.I.E.L.D. for short—” 

Go to the _park_ where the other wrinkled men move pieces of plastic around a chessboard and say boring things to each other while the birds watch them and hope for crumbs that never fall. It knows what it is like to hope for crumbs that never fall. To kneel under the table and hope and hope and hope.

Thursday, today, go to the steakhouse, _this_ steakhouse, order the food, put on the lie that says kindly old man so that the people serving the food don’t know that he deserves a dull knife _to_ the gut and not a juicy steak _in_ the gut. Tell them to make the music quieter, or to make the glowing screens show something different, or to bring him a new fork when he has not even looked at the one rolled up in the cloth.

Predictable. Every day, the next step in the pattern. It knows the pattern, knows the steps, knows that it is time to interrupt the pattern. The bingo announcer will not give the researcher a code. The dead drop will not give the researcher a sign. The chess players will not give the researcher a message. The men and women in the aprons will not give the researcher a signal.

The researcher is a dead end. The researcher will not lead it to more targets, and so has become a target himself. It’s time. It has waited long enough for this. And the researcher, never one to wait if he could avoid it, has waited longer still. Has waited years, has grown old waiting to be needed, to be useful, to be important. 

Well. 

The researcher _is_ needed; it has a list, and the researcher belongs on it. The researcher is _useful_ ; it is hungry, and a successful kill will feed it. The researcher is _desperately_ important; important enough to wake it up when it sleeps, to drag it up out of the nest of soft things to pace the crawl space until the fear leaves it again. 

It is tired. Tired _from_ waking up sweating and shaking and afraid. Tired _of_ waking up sweating and shaking and afraid. It does not _need_ to be afraid now that it is free. But the researcher… 

The researcher carved out data and crunched up data and cut it so that data ran out of its veins, and when the researcher had his data— Then the— After the numbers comes—

It is still full of data, data the researcher will want.

And after the numbers comes the _fun_. 

After the numbers, there is the tacky, hard cafeteria table under the cheek, the fists clenched in the hair, the boots kicking at the ankles and knocking the feet apart, the weight on the back and the pushing and the sting and the burning and the pain. The grunting from above, from behind. The edge of the table digging into it.

There is the choking face, holding the mouth open and biting into the skin behind the teeth, digging into the sides of the mouth, pulling at the hair where the buckle closes. There is the floor hard against the knees and the hands in the hair dragging the head forward and forward and forward until there is nowhere for the nose to go except to press into skin and hair and sometimes fabric, zipper, button.

There is the line of men waiting to have fun and calling out suggestions. Hands hauling it up from floor to table, shoving it down from table to floor, up to table, down to floor, to table to floor to… 

And there is the researcher, then and as now, sitting at the table, the repeated stabbing of his fork into the meat, the steady sawing of his knife, the chewing and the swallowing of the meat and the vegetables and the bread. 

But there is no choking face now. _That_ is the difference. There is no line of men, no crowd of them with their dicks out and their grins wide. Now it wears the _killing_ face, not the choking face. No one here can push into it, drag it by the hair, hurt it. No one _now_.

Now there is only the one man, sitting at the table, cutting into his meat, lifting chunks of fluffy potato and flame-kissed broccoli to his mouth, tearing off bits of flaky roll with yellow-white smears of butter. Piling dripping mushrooms and translucent onions onto the meat and eating it all at once.

It is crouching outside the window now, not kneeling on the floor or bent over the table. But it still trembles, still watches the fork travel from plate to mouth to plate to mouth to plate to mouth to… 

Now, _now,_ it reminds itself, it does not have to hope for the possibility that the fork could make a detour, could deposit something—anything—onto the floor under the table to be snatched up while the men pushing into it exchange places. 

Now it will earn its meat _not_ by silently accepting the procession of grunting field agents slamming it again and again into the edge of the table as they push and push and push into it, _not_ by being compliant enough, limp enough, yielding enough under the weight of the men on top of it, or to the wrenching of the head and neck as it kneels between their legs— No.

No, _now_ it will earn its meat by slicing the researcher into pieces smaller than the meat he cuts up at his table in the glowing yellow light.

But not here. It could strike now, could go in through the window—the screen is nothing at all, lets out the sounds and the smells and will let _in_ the asset—but the exfil options are insufficient. It would be interrupted. Observed.

It will earn its meat in the researcher’s home. By following him back, by dropping forkfuls of his aging flesh under the table of his dining nook, dropping and dropping until the researcher is a pile and not a person. 

It will earn the reward by killing, the same as any other mission— _the mission is the most important thing_ —but it will earn the reward its _own_ way now. It has will. It has choices. It can decide.

And it has decided that it will not wake up again with prickling fear racing along the spine and curling in the guts. It has chosen not to wait another week for the researcher to lead it to others. It has willed that this happen tonight.

“—unprecedented takeover of the hunt for what local authorities are calling the D.C. Slasher. Police Chief Reifsteck is expected to…”

The researcher has stopped cutting his meat. He has stopped ferrying potatoes and broccoli to his mouth. He is looking up, looking at the glowing panel, is—

— _breaking his pattern_. 

Why. 

There is something important there, something the researcher wants to know about, something that is worth deviating from predictability. Code, sign, message, signal? Information that will give the researcher a new purpose, a purpose other than helping it earn its reward? Information that will give the researcher a warning, maybe? A warning that would send him away and steal the chance for a reward?

Unacceptable. No. The researcher cannot go away.

It swallows, feels the throat press against the lowest part of the killing face. Feels the lungs strain against the ribs. Feels the heart thump- _thump_ in the ears, behind the eyes hiding under the upper part of the killing face, the eyes of night.

There is information inside the flat glowing panel that is not for it to look at. Information the researcher will obtain. Information that it could obtain, too, if it looks.

But it is not meant to pay attention to those panels. It knows better. The flat, glowing panels—screens—are not for it to look at. They are not. The voices that have no mouths are not for it to listen to. They are not. 

It knows better, learned that lesson, never forgot it, knows what is and is not for assets.

But the researcher must not be allowed to know something that it does not know, something that could send him away before it can claim him and the reward, something that could help him to escape it. 

So… So it won’t look, but will just… pass the eyes over it… 

Just… just passing the… the eyes… 

Over…

It swallows again and looks up at the glowing panel.

There is a man. In the screen. His shoulders are broad, his jaw is strong, his nose is… too big for his face? But it is the right size in his face. He is wearing a circus costume like a flag, with… with a… letter on his forehead and a star—a star a star _a star_ —on the center of his chest like an invitation to aim a— 

And a red-haired woman in black leaps at him and lands feet-first on a large metal disc he holds out to her with its matching target—a star! like on the arm!—and she flies through the air and twists like a ballerina, like a spider, like a—

—why a spider—

Twists and leaps into the air to—

—to—

—twists—

—a star—

They are closing up the restaurant.

It blinks.

The tables are all empty except for the researcher’s table, and that one is now filled with laughing women drinking liquid rainbows through twisting straws. The panels along the walls are dark and empty now, and the clown man with the star-shield and the ballerina woman with the red-hair are gone.

The researcher is gone.

It knows where the researcher went, knows where the researcher goes every night, where the researcher lives. Where the researcher will die.

Unless… Unless the information it did not obtain has broken the researcher’s pattern, sent the researcher away and away and out of reach and _away_.

It could go there now, just in case. Could slink out of this leafy nook and follow the shadows through the night. Failure is not an option. It does not fail. It _cannot_ fail. It— 

Its whole—

 _The_ whole body aches, the muscles all pulled tight and held tense for… difficult to tell. There are no clues left behind, no throbbing hash marks in the flesh to indicate how many men have pushed into it or burning blisters on the skin to show that a new team took over while it was not able to pay attention to the lessons.

The laughing women are talking on the sidewalk. How did they get there. When did they move.

The head pounds and pounds, the brain beating against the skull in time with the heart. Thump. _Thump_. The eyes burn, the killing face presses tight—too tight—against the jaw, against the temples, against—

A car arrives, swallows the women up, drives off.

It will retreat. Regroup. Try again. This… is not a failure. It… does not fail, _cannot_ fail, _will_ not—

 _Has not_ —

* * *

Failed. It has _failed_. 

It was close, was _there_ , was ready, was—

Distracted.

It rips at the hair and chokes on the breath that hisses silent through the clenched teeth.

 _Why?_ It knows _better_. It knows to _ignore_ the flat glowing panels, ignore the voices that have no mouths, ignore the things that are not for it to pay attention to, that are there for people and not for assets, that it has no _right_ to. It has _learned_ that lesson. 

Has… 

…Has forgotten that lesson. Needs to be taught again.

Has failed.

It huddles smaller, pulls the soft things tighter around the body, winds the cocoon so tight, all of the stolen fabric, unattended bed fabric and swimming pool fabric, left by careless people in tiled rooms lined with square cryo tanks with their round windows and once hanging from a noose strung taut across a small field of grass—yard. That is a yard. Hanging from a noose across a yard.

It has will, but… 

But it has failed, has been turned back from the target, has been distracted from the mission objective. _The mission is the most important thing and it has failed_. It has seen the glowing panel over the bar of the steakhouse, has _looked_ at it. Paid attention to it. Listened to the mouthless voices coming out of it. Seen—

It forgot the lesson. Wipe it and start over. But there are no boys to get their dicks out. There are no handlers-operators-trainers-technicians. There is no chair-cage with the white electric fire. How can it start over? There…

There _is_ concrete. 

The eyes narrow.

And there are bars inside the concrete—rebar—bars that poke out of the broken bits and sometimes catch on the soft things if it is not careful.

Can catch on _it_ , too, catch on it like the meat hooks in some bases but duller, _leave it to hang around, that’s what the hooks are there for_ , but—

But _it_ does not matter. Not if it is a failure. And it has failed. So let the metal bars catch on it and rip it and tear it. They are not hooks, but they are close. And it has earned that, the way it has not earned a better reward.

The stomach gnaws and clenches, twists about like the brain inside the skull, like the fingers digging into the palms, gouging crescents of blood and raising the screech of metal on metal. The reward it has _earned_.

The reward it earned because it saw… Saw… 

Who?

People. It saw people. In the glowing panel, the screen, people moving around—cameras captured them like they cannot capture it, and cameras put them in the screen, the man with the star-shield and the woman with the red-hair, the people it _does not know_.

Clown man with his bright costume and ballerina woman with her leaping. And the shield they shared. Used together. Like a team. 

…a star… 

It whimpers, silent, lips twisted against the throb throb throb of the head, the pain pain pain behind the eyes. This is why the glowing panels are not for it. This is the lesson. This is the reward for disobeying, disregarding the lesson, thinking that its stolen will could give it _all_ of the freedoms.

…Who?

Who was in the screen?

It does not _know_ who, or when, or why, or how, or who who _who?_

The nothing that it _does_ know, the blank that doesn’t fill itself in, the hole that gapes and taunts… all the emptiness where answers should be slithers about behind the eyes and stabs and stabs and stabs. 

The head hurts, the chest hurts, the stomach hurts.

It hasn’t earned anything better, and so the… 

It hasn’t earned… 

But it… 

Dangerous thought. 

It _could_ earn. Couldn’t it? It could still earn. Could earn something better.

Better than the dark tight spot, safe but hurting with the soft things wound around it to smother and suffocate instead of protect and cradle. 

The head will still hurt until it can push the clown man with the star-shield and the ballerina woman with the red-hair into a hole in the mind and bury them. 

The chest will still hurt because it has failed failed _failed_ its mission objective. _The mission is the most important thing_.

But the stomach… It can fix that. Can change that. Can make the stomach _not_ hurt.

It has will, even if will does not give it the freedom to look into the glowing screens or listen to the voices without mouths. _Will_ gave it the freedom to cut and to slice and to rip and to tear, and _will_ gives it the freedom to make its own mission objectives.

There are targets in every part of this wretched city. It memorized the faces, the addresses, the maps, the files. It knows them all. It will choose one of them. 

It will earn the reward despite the failure. Despite the… setback. Yes. _Setback_. It has not failed until it gives up. While there is still a mission objective, there is still an opportunity to earn the reward.

It unfolds within the bundle of soft things, the legs stretching out, the arms coming down from where they clutch the head. It emerges from the nest, crawls free from the cocoon. 

The killing face is there beside it, not yet tucked into the bag with the many beautiful fangs and claws, the cold metal that slides and slices and slips into the targets. It reaches for the killing face, for the killing mouth and the eyes like night. They are cold and hungry and they have been denied, but not for very long. Not for much longer. 

They won’t be denied, and _neither will it._

The feeder with the red mouth is not close, but distance does not matter. Distance is nothing, and so she is next. It is hungry, and she will do. It is late at night. She will be in her home, might be asleep. It will wake her up. She should not sleep through this. 

She makes food for people now, not assets. She feeds people now, doesn’t withhold food from assets. She offers food to people now, doesn’t force food into the mouths of assets.

She will cook for it one last time, and it will earn that reward from her by making death for her, feeding terror to her, forcing long and twisting final moments on her.

She will not be able to choose whether it has done well enough, will not be able to laugh at it with her red mouth pulled back and grinning, will not be able to take the reward away. Will not be able to put the hose in the mouth and force a different reward down inside of it until it heaves and shakes and loses everything. 

Will not have a foot to put on the neck, or a red mouth to tell it to lick everything up again. Waste not, want not.

The stomach still hurts, is empty, is a gaping wound inside of it, an echoing cavern. But not for long.

It grits the teeth together and fastens on the killing face. Tightens the lower part and slides on the upper part. The killing mouth and the eyes like night. Checks that the teeth with their serrated edges are in place along legs, torso, that the fangs with the slick smooth slicing edges are where it will need them.

There is a mission objective. _One more time._ The mission is the most important thing.

It unfolds to its full height, discards the soft things, emerges from the crawl space. Spreads wings like a butterfly, angel, _gift to mankind._

The feeder with the red mouth.

She will feed it one more time, and then she will feed the worms in her garden. It will spread her around, nice and thin for everyone to see.

Make sure everyone gets enough to eat, too, all of the worms and little garden creatures.

_Waste not…_

The eyes narrow behind the killing face.

 _…Want not_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So… Looks like it could be that Tony will come to regret his gardening metaphor. ^_^
> 
> Content warning: Remembered events of an extremely non-consensual nature. Non-descriptive dissociation in which our POV character loses time and can’t quite seem to catch it again. Contemplation of inflicting intentional self-harm as punishment. Indications of unintentional self-harm that goes unnoticed (but that, if noticed, our POV character would approve of and/or find satisfactory). 
> 
> In short, someone is having a very bad evening. (Multiple someones, really, but we’re focused on just the one someone for these warnings.)


	10. Clint | …How does your garden grow?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title comes from the nursery rhyme “Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary” rather than from a song, this time.
> 
> Content warnings in the end notes; please do check them out.

**—Washington D.C. | Friday, 01 June 2012 | 7:00 a.m.—**

“—interesting, at least. Disturbing, but you can’t call anything about this guy boring. He’s the opposite of boring. Never a dull moment, whether we’re talking about his sweet robot arm, or—”

Clint nods along blearily in the passenger seat and hugs his 64 oz “travel” mug to his chest, sending up a silent but emphatic “thank you” to the universe for supplying a Tony Stark, even if the man himself won’t shut up. 

Because the resulting StarkThermos is a worthy trade-off, with its blah-blah insulating technology and its nano-yada-yada and whatever else Stark had been saying when he’d handed it over on their way out the door.

Clint hadn’t been listening at that point. He’d been sucking down coffee like there was no tomorrow, because the sun hadn’t been up yet and that should have meant he didn’t have to be up, either, except for Hill calling and Sitwell calling and phones ringing everywhere like new-age roosters all through the house Stark had rented for the team.

It’s too early for this shit.

Clint tunes back in to Stark Radio, the inescapable, sitting-in-the-car-with-you edition, and raises the thermos to his lips. If he’s got to listen to the man whose technology keeps his coffee at the perfect temperature, he’s going to drink that perfectly near-scalding coffee.

“…mean, who jabs a turkey baster through a woman’s trachea when they’re just going to hack her head off later?” Stark asks, gesturing wildly with his right hand before dropping it to the gear stick as they turn off the street into the neighborhood. 

“Who _does_ that? Who even comes up with that sort of thing?” There’s another sweeping gesture. “For that matter, who goes looking for a turkey baster during a murder? Who has _time_ for that when they’re busy killing people?”

Stark pulls up across the street from the commotion and parks. “What sort of murder itinerary allows time for ransacking the kitchen drawers hunting down stuff that’s only ever _maybe_ used around Thanksgiving?”

He thumps the steering wheel. “It’s only been June for seven hours! There’s no way this woman’s turkey baster was lying around waiting for him. Turkey is disgusting and we only have to eat it once a year. _That’s_ what we’re all so thankful for in November!”

Clint mumbles the beginning of a few words before shrugging. He knows what a turkey baster is, so that’s a win. Sort of. It’s too early to have conversations.

“Maybe she likes turkey,” he finally says, once it’s clear Stark is ceding the floor for the moment and he’s kind of got to do his part and contribute to the conversation. “ _Liked_ turkey, I mean. Past tense. I know she hated pizza, so it’s not like she had good taste. Beyond that, I got nothing.”

Well, not nothing. He read the file before sunup, same as Stark, and he got a lot of things. But it’s too early to debate whether tracheotomy via turkey baster fits the MO. Because there’s no debate to be had, of course. It _does_. 

This guy jammed a mop handle up a janitor’s ass all the way out through his rib cage and then poured drain cleaner down the guy’s throat. Of course he got creative in the kitchen. Why wouldn’t he? That’s sensational shit. That’s _tabloids_ , right there. 

And Terry Debenham was a S.H.I.E.L.D. contractor. Score another point for shining the black light on S.H.I.E.L.D. and marveling at all the organic glowing splotches.

As far as was ever made public record, Debenham was brought on to review the cafeteria offerings and rewrite those menus to ensure the food available to onsite S.H.I.E.L.D. employees was nutritious and “properly balanced.” 

And she did. The pizza disappeared off the menu practically overnight. If Clint had been any more motivated—or hell, motivated at all—he’d have started a petition to bring the pizza back. 

But she also helped prep agents for deep cover, designing nutritional regimens that kept them healthy while slimming them down or plumping them up, whichever was needed to fit in for their op or get them reintegrated after that op.

Clint had gotten a look at one of those meal plans. He’d never been so glad that he wasn’t cut out for that kind of spy routine. Kale and boneless, skinless chicken breast, as far as the eye could see. Sometimes disguised as a milkshake. It’s just not right.

“Well, if you’ve got nothing,” Stark says, “let’s hope they’ve got nothing, too.” He eyes the scene across the street with its bright tape and scurrying forensics team and the brooding figure of Jack Rollins standing there with his back to the street and his arms crossed.

Clint leans his head back and closes his eyes for a moment, steeling himself mentally and physically for the live-action version of the human mulch the preliminary crime scene photographs depicted. 

“Just to be clear,” Clint mumbles up at the sun visor, “no matter how close to lunchtime this takes us, we are _not_ getting brunch after this.”

“Deal.”

Welp. That was easy. Time to get started on the field work for this op, which won’t be easy at all. Clint wills himself to get out of the car, and then doesn’t go anywhere. 

It’s too early for a yard full of meaty chunks, too early for grisly murder, too early for grumpy-brute Rollins. The sun is hardly even up properly. Poor thing’s still stumbling around at the horizon looking like it had a rough night.

Come to think of it, Rollins isn’t looking too chipper, either. Hard to tell from the back, but he’s holding himself like he had a very late night. Maybe he’s even hungover. 

No blame for that, though—the STRIKE boys are up there on the list right next to engineers. If Clint was the kind of S.H.I.E.L.D. agent who got shivved in the night and cut up small, he’d probably be hitting the bottle, himself, just to settle his nerves.

Nothing to say he’s not on the list somewhere, though. Him and Natasha. Good old STRIKE Delta, party of two, but still S.H.I.E.L.D. through and through. And the Red Room thing on top. Yeah. They’re both probably on that list. It’s just a matter of time before this guy gets to their names. 

Not a thought to dwell on when trying to convince yourself to get out of a safe, comfy car and poke around in the remains of the latest victim from that very same list, maybe see a bit of what’s coming your way later on. 

Though, hey, cars aren’t safe, either, are they? Not when the guy fucking pounces on them mid-freeway and abducts steering columns.

“You know,” Stark says, clearly _also_ stalling, “this Soldier guy has some serious anger issues.”

“You think?”

“Maybe he and Bruce’d get along. Bruce loves to talk. I bet I can promise him a chat with this guy and he’ll hop on a plane.”

Clint grimaces. Stark doesn’t really think that, he knows—or hopes, anyway. Yeah, Stark’s smart. He realizes what kind of messy shit show it would be if their killer—the dude mad enough to _cube_ people, into actual cubes—traded anger management tips with the Hulk.

“I don’t even want to be a fly on the wall for that introduction.” Mostly because the wall would be smashed and he doesn’t think even a fly would make it out of the war zone alive.

Stark flaps a hand. “He says he’s not that kind of doctor, but I bet the big angry green guy has some insights on this little angry cyborg guy.” 

“Little?” Clint says. “He’s enhanced. He’s gotta be at least as big around as Cap, right? Cyborg or not, he’s probably built like a tree trunk.”

Clint heaves a sigh into his travel mug. “You still good to play your part?”

“If it’s anything like the hotel yesterday, there won’t be much acting needed.” Stark rolls his shoulders, less shrug, more slow-motion shudder. “Even with the sheets everywhere. That’s a lot of person scattered around.”

“Good point.” Yeah. The hotel had been a real mess. Pictures didn’t do it justice. But this’ll probably be worse, despite being—they think—just the one victim.

Clint just hopes their buddy strategy pays off and also doesn’t _look_ like a strategy in the first place. Though he’s got to admit, yet again, that Cap’s a pretty smart dude. Real strategic. He can see himself falling in line behind him and not even minding it.

It makes sense, after all. 

If you’ve got traumatized people getting questioned, you put the two with the most skills getting information, connecting with people, and/or being overlooked on that task. Natasha and he both know how to read people. Clint disarms with charm and Natasha moves in for the kill. Or the conversation. Whichever.

You want to know how the hell your perp ripped apart a wall and vanished, all that? Set the obnoxious engineer and super famous super soldier on the task of assessing the scene for “how the hell did he do it?” answers.

Going in for a meeting with Sitwell, where you’re trying to play _nice_ without agreeing to play _together_ , maybe grab some intel, maybe make an impression? Send in the guy with “honesty” stamped across his face and the spy almost no one at S.H.I.E.L.D. entirely trusts, and let the one be a decoy for the other.

Inspecting a patch of lawn with at least one dead body scattered all over and need to appear borderline incompetent in order to get a close enough look at everything? Time for the nominally civilian billionaire to look out of his depth, sick to his stomach and generally weak so that the underestimated goofball can blunder around seeing what no one thinks he’s bright enough to see.

Plus, once Stark’s “too overcome” to actually pay attention to the scene, he can check on the surveillance being planted at the Triskelion, see what he can dig up before they even know the bugs are there.

So, yeah. Good plan. Still doesn’t mean he’s looking forward to poking his nose around in all the blood-streaked corners and trying to get a read on Debenham or her killer beyond the surface level. 

But they can’t sit here much longer without Rollins turning around and getting suspicious. Hungover or not, he’s still STRIKE. And say what you will about STRIKE, you don’t get on a STRIKE team without being vigilant. 

But he really wants to keep sitting here instead of looking at dead people. 

Hopefully, they’ll be tangling with the guy _making_ those dead people long-distance when they finally _do_ tangle with him. Anyone who goes around ripping windows out of walls and steering columns out of cars and whatevers out of whatever elses is someone he’d rather be looking at from behind a nocked arrow.

Anyone who gives Natasha nightmares.

Yeah. And with anger issues, to boot, just like Stark says. But wouldn’t he _have_ to be pissed off in order to do all this? 

Clint runs through their options. 

Maybe he’s been sent after S.H.I.E.L.D. by another agency, probably Department X or a spin-off of the same, and is going off-script in his pursuit of the mission objective. S.H.I.E.L.D. is the target, but not like this. Maybe he’s still sort of with them, but his handlers lost their touch, broke his trust, somehow drove him away… and this is his twisted parting gift to them.

Maybe he’s actually turned on his handlers—again, probably Department X, based on Natasha’s intel—and S.H.I.E.L.D. wasn’t even supposed to be a target. Maybe his handlers wanted to work with S.H.I.E.L.D. on a common project and this is his way of saying “fuck you” to the lot of them. Nothing like a kiddie pool filled with bloody chunks to unseal a deal.

Maybe he’s working for a new set of handlers in a new agency, and this is his way of turning over a new leaf. There’s no shortage of intelligence organizations that feel threatened by S.H.I.E.L.D. And taking down S.H.I.E.L.D. for his new handlers in a publicity-stunt slash murder carnival would definitely earn some badass-scary points for the new guy.

But no matter why or how he’s broken off from his longstanding handlers, he’ll have built up a lot of rage in the process.

Field agents defect all the time, but enforcers… It takes a lot to push an enforcer over the edge. Enforcers don’t get to be enforcers in the first place unless they’re rabidly loyal, and once you get that loyal, it tends to stick.

And not just an enforcer for a typical intelligence agency, either, but Department X. Connected with the Red Room and a half dozen others, all shadowy as fuck and beyond borderline abusive in their manipulations. Natasha had seen through it, but it took years. This guy must have seen through it, too.

Whether this guy is as old as Natasha says he is or has only been active since ‘09 when Natasha got in front of his scope in Odessa, that’s still a hell of a long time being ordered to kill on command and based on blind trust, a hell of a long time to build up some resentment, anger, disagreement with the target roster.

Natasha had been pretty angry when Clint had pulled her out of the shadows and into the light. Not angry at him. Not exactly. Or not for long, anyway—because he’s charming.

But she’d been full of fire for the Red Room, and not in the enthusiastic sense. Probably the only reason she’d agreed to come over to S.H.I.E.L.D. instead of just lobbing a grenade at him—aside from his natural charm, that is—was that he’d actually listened to her… and heard what she wasn’t able to say.

Way down beneath the anger at having been lied to and manipulated for the entirety of her remembered life, and way down under the layer of revenge-seeking for the same, she’d been trying to fix it.

Not trying to put pieces back together that she’d torn apart or somehow resurrect everything they’d convinced her to destroy for them. That wouldn’t do any good, and she’d known it. But trying to make it so they couldn’t do that again, trying to put a stick through their bike spokes, a wrench in their gears. 

And trying to fix herself. Trying to outweigh all that she’d done and all that she’d been with enough good to balance out those scales. Trying to save herself, really. Rebuild herself fresh. Make amends for who they’d made her to be before she grabbed back control and lived her own life, her own way.

Yeah, she’d been angry. And he’d listened all the way down to the sorrow at the heart of that anger.

And yeah, this guy’s angry, too. Of course he is. Look at the shit he’s doing. You don’t do this unless you’re angry. Maybe they’ll find some sorrow at the bottom of his well, but the well’s pretty topped up with rage right now, rage and chunks of human flesh, so… 

So it’ll be safer for everyone involved if Clint can line up a shot and take this guy down before anyone goes in close. Nothing lethal, just enough to keep him from tearing any of them to pieces while they maybe save him and maybe… 

Eh. While they save him, then. Alternative’s not any good.

He hadn’t had to shoot Natasha to get in close. With Natasha, he’d figured out where she was headed, sat down and waited for her, and heard her out. Helped, even, for a while. Earned her trust.

But Natasha had been burning down safe houses and blowing up office buildings after hours and leaving behind dossiers packed with evidence of corruption for investigators to peruse at their leisure. Natasha was out to ruin comfortable lives and make sure her enemies lasted a long, miserable time in prison or on the run. 

The Soldier is also ruining lives, but in the “tortured to death for as long as possible and then ripped into little bits” sense of the word, and that’s a level of fucked up that probably requires an arrow to the butt as a greeting.

“Cover’s blown,” Stark mutters under his breath. “We’re spotted. Rollins at ten o’clock. Abort, abort—”

Clint sighs and unbuckles his seat belt. Time to go look at some of those little bits. At least he can trust Stark to play the melodramatic card.

* * *

Hours later, after watching a pair of field techs slide a severed, flesh-stripped head with a sawn-off turkey baster through the suspiciously intact neck back into a paper bag after pulling it out to verify they had finally collected all the pieces of the lips and tongue and weren’t missing any, Clint is more than over this whole thing. 

And he hadn’t been enthusiastic to start off. 

“It’s so much worse in person,” Stark says a bit weakly at his elbow. 

“I mean, Christ, she’s in so many pieces, they might as well scrape her up with a rake, maybe get out a leaf blower. Someone was playing Operation out on the lawn all night and the buzzer just gave up after a while. It’s literally Fargo out here, only our killer took his wood chipper with him when he left. There’s—”

He’s talking a good game, but the tone never does reach flippant. Clint’s not sure how much of that is still a performance for Rollins and how much is the fact that he technically _is_ a civilian, despite all the shit he’s been through and all the Iron Man stunts he gets up to. 

A civilian who’s also been abducted in a war zone and tortured by terrorists and had loads of people try to kill him, and who went to space for a few minutes to nuke some E.T.s, but a civilian all the same. 

Not used to seeing some of this up close and personal, and in small enough pieces that they’re using tweezers for most of it and not just for stray hairs. Not when most of his experience with this stuff is explosions—big, flashy, and usually at a distance. 

And from inside a gaudy robot suit that probably filters out the smells. There’s nothing filtering the smells out here, and Debenham’s been pretty ripe for a while now, what with all the split intestines—more intestines, it seems, than ought to fit in one person—draped over a suburban back lawn in a surprisingly precise star. 

Because their guy just _loves_ stars.

“Coming through, coming through.” A field tech with a box of something that smells like day-old rotting puke does indeed come through, or at least passes by, and Stark hurries a step or two toward the bushes to dry retch a bit, then apparently sees something in those bushes and actually pukes before staggering away. 

He wipes his mouth. “Eurgh… Sympathy puke, no fair. I was winning.”

Should have gone with coffee, black enough to make you grimace and hot enough to burn your tongue. Definitely not a thick and frothy green smoothie. Clint can’t even really feel sorry for him about that part. Brought it on himself. Seaweed and veggies for breakfast. Nuts to that.

“At least we agreed not to get shawarma after this,” Clint offers.

“Or ever. I can’t look at shaved meat the same way again. I might go vegan. They’re doing magical things in the field of fake hamburgers. I could adapt.”

Stark’s not the only one who’s been retching from time to time as the morning dragged on toward noon and the sun started to really go to work on what’s left of the victim. Some of the field techs are looking green around the gills, and it’s pretty obvious which of them are still sort of new on the job and which are old hands at this particular rodeo.

Beside him, Stark swishes his mouth out with water and spits into the grass. “You know how I said Capsicle and Charlotte’s Web were off to start a garden for me?”

No. Was that before or after he supplied a state-of-the-art nano mumble jumble high tech coffee mug? The timing really matters there. 

“Yeah, well, this is not what I meant when I said that. I was talking about data.”

“This _is_ data, sort of.”

“Numbers. Not meat. I meant inorganic data of a purely ones-and-zeros nature. Not…” He swallows. “Not a person mulched into the begonias like a well-shuffled meat-based jigsaw puzzle.”

Yeah, well, Clint would have passed this up, too. But their strategy is a good one, even if it means he has to be here when he could be pretty much anywhere else. Like in bed, still asleep. They can’t very well have sent Cap all on his lonesome to chat up Sitwell, and Stark would be watched even closer than Natasha.

No, better Stark’s here playing up the “poor guy who can’t stomach this” angle for Rollins’s benefit. Man. Rollins. Typical STRIKE Alpha. Show them a weakness, and they’re like a dog on a ham hock, eyes for nothing else.

A few exaggerated expressions and a bit of dry heaving on Stark’s part—though, yeah, some of that had turned real—had at least gotten Rollins off Clint’s back long enough to go exploring earlier. 

Yeah, their buddy system is working out great. While Rollins took the time to show Stark around the backyard crime scene, pointing out the grisliest bits, like the morsels tucked inside each and every tulip, Clint got to blunder about the house noticing shit.

Like the fact that the whole slaughterhouse scene in the bathroom was a gruesome mess, complete with blood on every surface and a rusty ring of gore around the top of the tub. Whether that was a bit of victim-drowning or a post-murder spa day is yet to be determined by forensics, though Clint’s heard some muttering about turkey-baster neck-snorkels that he’s going to go ahead and have a nightmare about later.

But it’s also _incomplete_ in some very interesting ways.

For one thing, there’s no shampoo. Face wash still on the counter, hand soap, lotion, deodorant. Full makeup caddy with some of the reddest lipstick he’s ever seen. Dryer, curling iron, straightener. Round brush and wide-toothed comb. Beauty bar in the shower. Conditioner, that stuff that’s purple so your blond looks less brassy. No shampoo, though.

Eight face cloths, four hand towels, only three bath sheets. Debenham had some excessively fluffy bath sheets, not normal towels like a regular person, but the big-ass luxury ones that are practically beach towels. Soft as a cloud, and four different sets—white, pink, lavender, baby blue. Each set with a bath sheet, hand towel, and two rags. 

The pink bath sheet is missing. The blue set is bloody and left where their guy dropped them, the white and lavender sets are folded neatly in the linen closet. And the pink set? Neatly folded in the linen closet, but incomplete.

Whitening toothpaste, perfectly squeezed from the bottom, and with one of those stupid roller clips, too. He wasn’t surprised to see it; she seems like the type to go Godzilla on anyone squeezing from the middle of the tube. Mouthwash, floss. Lavender toothbrush in the cup, white and pink toothbrushes in packages under the sink, no blue toothbrush in sight.

So unless the forensics team is skimming off the top in the weirdest and most morbid way possible, their killer is now in possession of one bottle of purple shampoo, one gigantic, fluffy, distressingly soft, pink towel, and one blue toothbrush.

And that says something. Says a lot of somethings.

And so sue him if he’s had enough failed relationships to notice things about a woman’s bathroom. It’s not like any of them worked out in the long run. Or even in the short term. But when there’s this much care taken to do things in sets like this—maybe one set per week, or maybe mix and match, who knows; he’s not organized, himself—then the gaps really stand out.

More importantly, it’s not like anyone on this crime scene expects him, of all people, to notice how impeccably and fully stocked this woman kept her bathroom. You know. Underneath all the blood and the clumps of torn-out hair that hadn’t made it out to the yard.

What Clint _hadn’t_ been able to find before being chased out by a scandalized field tech bitching about scene contamination is just which _white_ thing is missing. 

Because there’s purple, pink and blue accounted for, and even if the shampoo didn’t come in a set of four colors, something’s telling him it counts as lavender and that there _is_ a set of four somewhere in that bathroom that’s missing its white element. Or at least something white that’s not where it should be, that walked off the property with their killer.

Their killer who has started taking mementos and souvenirs, perhaps. Trinkets. Not body parts in jars of formaldehyde—at least not yet—but it’s still a little keepsake. Probably four little keepsakes in this case.

Clint just has no idea what the white one is.

* * *

It’s well past lunchtime when they finally pile back into the car, but Clint isn’t even considering food right now, and he’s pretty sure the feeling’s mutual. If it’s not and Stark swings by a drive thru, Clint’s getting out and walking back the rest of the way. The only food smells he’s up for are coffee smells. Those are always good.

As soon as Stark’s pulled away from the curb and started them off toward the main road, he slides in a comm and links up with the other two. 

Clint sighs and switches the frequency on one of his hearing aids. So much for a break in the festivities.

A bit of static followed by beeps lets them all know the link is open, and Cap doesn’t waste any time. “All clear from this side. How is it over there?”

“Okay, so how’s this?” Stark asks. “I’ve been working on it.” He strikes something sort of like an “alas, poor Yorick” pose with one hand cupping the air. “Terry, Terry, quite contrary, how’s the garden, so far?”

“You’re doing this?” comes Cap’s voice over the comms. “Seriously?”

Clint stares at him. Yeah, he’s doing this. Clint can’t even say it’s too early anymore. But hey, everyone’s got a right to some gallows humor. It’s not like Debenham’s around to complain.

Stark starts over with a peevish throat-clearing. “Terry, Terry, quite contrary, how’s the garden, so far? There’s rotting flesh and smells of death,” he continues in falsetto, “and guts in the shape of a star.” 

He grins. “Pretty good, right? For someone who’s been huffing corpse fumes all morning. You can clap. Go ahead, I won’t mind.”

There’s silence over the comms. Clint can imagine Cap’s expression all pinched and disapproving.

“Tough crowd,” Natasha says, and Clint can hear the hint of a smile. 

“Yeah, I’ll say. It’s not a clean rhyme, but I’ve been ankle deep in Terry, Terry all day, and I think that earns me a little slack on my rhyme scheme.”

“Did you get anything off the bugs, Tony?” Cap asks, just skipping right past the poetry recital. “Sitwell was real suspicious of the both of us. We might not have long before they sweep for them.”

“If they haven’t already,” Natasha adds.

“Checking the latest,” Stark says, and then doesn’t follow it up right away. 

Probably getting a direct report from JARVIS, and Clint is happy to leave him to it. It’s probably just his comm, but Clint’s not even going to think about how the alternative would work, or about getting messages delivered straight to the brain by entities that aren’t yourself. 

Nope. Not going there. Not going _near_ there. Noping right the hell out of there, in fact.

When Clint tips his coffee mug up, a mere dribble comes out. “Aw, coffee,” he mumbles. Abandoning him in his moment of need. Still hot, though, gotta give it that, even if it’s not giving him a viable distraction from the Nopemobile he’s trapped in.

Wait. Real suspicious of “both of us?” That doesn’t make sense. Why would Sitwell be suspicious of Cap? He’d called them up specifically asking Cap to come in for their meeting earlier than planned—and making no mention of the rest of them. 

“What do you mean suspicious of both of you?” he asks. “Why invite Cap over and then give him the stink eye?”

There’s a considering hum on the comms. “I’m not sure. He seemed keen on getting me alone, though. And he asked for me specifically on the phone this morning when Nat answered.”

“And not just Sitwell,” Natasha adds. “Rumlow, too, and Barkholt. Seems like STRIKE wants to talk to _you_ , Rogers, without me. Probably without any of the rest of us, either.”

“Suspicious,” Stark says, tuning back in. “And after we got along so well, too. I’m using yellow thread for this bit when we get back. JARVIS, make sure we have yellow thread for Colonel Mustard.” 

Clint can’t actually hear it, but he’s heard the AI say “of course, Sir” so much in the last month living in the Tower—and even more in the last couple of days—that it’s easy to imagine. 

“What would they want to talk about with Cap,” Clint says, “that they wouldn’t also want to talk to rest of us about?” 

Sure, if it’s Tesseract-related, Cap’s a good choice. But Natasha was the one to seal the portal, so having them both on hand would be more logical.

And if it’s the scepter—

Clint forcibly relaxes his grip on his knee. If it’s the scepter they want to talk about, Clint has the most experience along with Stark, since Banner’s practically off-world in whatever jungle he’s hunkered down in.

“I don’t know,” Cap says grimly. “But I don’t trust them. There’s something there that stinks. As far as I can tell, they want to work with _me_ , not _us_. And Nat’s right. No one said as much, but it’s pretty clear they want this Soldier as an asset to deploy as part of S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“So we double down, then.” Clint runs a fingertip along the top of his mug. “No one on their own and we pair off for everything.” 

“Well, it’s worked so far. We make a good team, when we’re actually working _together_.” Cap pauses. “And shifting around our pairs seems to be keeping our rivals on their toes.”

“Maybe not as much on their toes as we need them to be,” Stark says.

Natasha’s voice over the comms is that special brand of tense that’s light and airy on the surface. “How do you mean?”

“This is S.H.I.E.L.D. we’re talking about.” Stark gives the steering wheel a light drumming with his thumbs. “They’re all supposed to be technologically incompetent. No offense,” he adds with what’s probably supposed to be an apologetic look in Clint’s direction.

“None taken,” Clint says, though, yeah, that does kind of rub him wrong. He’s got arrows Mr Roboto couldn’t even imagine. He’s not technologically incompetent. He’s just circadian-rhythmically challenged.

And so what if Stark supposedly hacked a S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier with ease? If hacking was hard, all the hackers wouldn’t be wearing hoodies in their basements.

Hoodies in a basement, though… Maybe Clint’s in the wrong job, because that sounds way more appealing than poking around murder gardens under the watchful eyes of a so-called STRIKE ally.

“Well,” Stark continues, “despite that whole incompetence issue, something showed JARVIS the door before we got much of anything and picked off our bugs one by one. Scrambled the credentials signal, too. Looks like the fortress has some kind of AI mote complete with alligators. But our data is not in another castle, at least. We know where it is. We’re just having some trouble getting it out.”

“Did we get _anything_ before they shut us out?” Cap asks.

“And is it worthwhile to try again,” Nat adds. “Because Clint is due for a psych eval and that’ll get two of us in the door without suspicion.”

Way to throw him under the bus, ‘Tasha. Yeah, the whole basement hoodie culture is looking mighty fine.

“Not enough. Not anything good.” Stark sighs. “Some personnel records to go through, none of them a match so far for our victim list. Expense reports."

“Expense reports? Why would those have been mixed in?”

Stark shrugs. “Someone’s cranky about a broken chair and a replacement fish tank in their office. Flooded the whole place, and a few dozen angelfish died flopping around on the carpet. Apparently no one thought to scoop ‘em into a cup or anything.”

He pulls into a Dunkin’ Donuts drive thru, going the right direction, but in reverse for reasons Clint doesn’t even want to ponder, and Clint doesn’t have the heart to remind him about their no-brunch agreement, because this is a house of coffee, a holy and sacred place. Even if Stark is pulling a stunt on holy ground.

“A bit of chatter about a ‘Project Insight’ that looks promising but vague,” Stark continues. “Something about gathering intelligence from around the globe and processing it for, somewhat redundantly, the insights.”

Clint sighs as the passenger window rolls down. Of course. Can’t go through a drive thru and not be handed things. Being handed things is pretty much the point of a drive thru.

“Seriously, these project names. I can give them some pointers. I come up with awesome project names. My names for things are top notch.” Stark leans over practically into Clint’s lap. “Two of your biggest cups of coffee, black, and a dozen donuts, glazed and filled, dealer’s choice.”

“Are you ordering _donuts?_ ”

“What, are you afraid I’ll spoil my appetite for dinner, Captain Mom?” Stark pulls forward—or, technically, backward—to the second window where he hands Clint a card and gestures for him to make with the paying. “What are you making? Is it Shake ‘n Bake? Can I help?”

There’s a silence on the comms that’s somehow disgruntled.

Clint would be disgruntled, too, except that the order includes large amounts of coffee, and he’ll happily pass some plastic back and forth to obtain the aforementioned coffee, especially when it’s not his plastic.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Tony, as usual.” Cap pauses. “And I’m not sure that one’s worth looking up.”

“It’s not,” Natasha says.

The priestess of the coffee shrine hands over the donuts and then the coffees, which Clint gratefully cradles. “You need a receipt?”

Stark shakes his head and backs the rest of the way through the drive thru before pulling forward out of the lot.

“‘Global’ makes me think of what the Avengers were formed for,” Cap says once they’re reasonably out of hearing distance. “To protect the whole planet, not just part of it. Could that have something to do with this Project Insight?”

“Nick had the Avengers materials on a very tight clearance,” Natasha says. “And probably even tighter now that Pierce has been killed. It’s not likely he’d let it be mixed up in another project.”

“Then it might have something to do with the World Security Council,” Cap suggests. “Fury was dealing with them on the helicarrier, before they tried to finish Schmidt’s work and drop a bomb on New York.”

Stark twitches and pulls up a navigation screen with the local streets.

Something tells Clint that “global” isn’t a keyword at all. Well over half of his missions have been clear on the other side of the world, so “gathering global intelligence for the insights” is about as revealing a project goal as “try to sneak into foreign places and keep things from blowing up.”

He takes a pull on the coffee and it rewards him with a burned tongue. Aw. Coffee. How could you. He takes another sip.

“Yeah, well on that delightful nuclear note,” Stark says with a drum of his fingers on the top arch of the steering wheel, “Arrow Lad and I have a donut bomb to drop on our stomachs. So we’re going to find a nice abandoned street sign and chill for a bit. And not talk about nukes or murder. We’ll be home by dinner, Mom.”

“That’s Captain Mom to you,” Cap says. “And agreed. Let’s take a breather and reconvene.” There’s a sigh on the comms. “It’s not like the Soldier is killing people around the clock.”

Well, Clint thinks as the comms beep off one by one. He kind of is. It’s got to be a full time job planning these things and then getting down to business. Cleaning up afterward. Storing his new stuff, now that he’s collecting trinkets. He’s got to have a hidey hole somewhere. They just have to find it. 

Yeah, same as with Natasha back in the day. Figure out where he’s going, and then get there first. Wait for him. Or, if they can’t predict a target, maybe they can trace him back home from one of the crime scenes. 

And ideally, do it quick. Because the faster they catch him, the fewer people have to die hard and slow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: Exploration of a crime scene in which there has been extreme dismemberment resulting in rotting human flesh and internal organs. Descriptions and discussions of terrible smells, dry retching, and vomiting. References to makeshift medical procedures performed with non-traditional equipment and impalement by means of cleaning implements. What can I say, guys? Someone had a busy night after last chapter’s brush with failure.
> 
> As always, please let me know if there's a content warning that's missing and I'll add it in.
> 
> Just general notes: I don't have a clue how actual crime scenes are investigated other than knowing that TV shows lie about it. So insert a shrug here, because I'm just making shit up in these scenes rather than devoting ages to thorough forensics methodology research. It's fanfic about comic book super heroes. I feel justified in hand-waving some things. ^_^


	11. Jasper | Correspondence with a mightier power

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title comes from [“Machine”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thQd1KYCgKU) by Regina Spektor.

**—Washington D.C. | Friday, 01 June 2012 | 7:00 a.m.—**

_Why?_

Jasper rubs his eyes with thumb and forefinger and then lets his glasses slide back down into place. It’s already been a long day and the sun is just barely up. 

A good chunk of that he can directly contribute to keeping up with last night’s failed operation. But last night and this morning are just one long slog at this point, hardly distinguishable save from the numbers on the clock ticking over from one day to another.

 **21:15.** Rollins reporting a no-show at the restaurant. Not a single glimpse of their asset slinking about the place. No sign that it had been there and already left, either. The thing was simply not around. 

The Z.E.L.U.S. program had been so certain it was Dr Chapman’s turn. That the asset was bound to have grown impatient enough to lash out, and the restaurant would be what pushed it over that edge. All the food. The smells. The memories, since it seems to have more of those than they’d like. 

Enough to make it sloppy from remembered traumas.

But they’d scoured the place, Rollins insisted. Rooftop, parking lot, nearby alleys and side streets, even the dumpsters out back, though Chapman wouldn’t have gone near enough to those to make them a good spot for an ambush. They’d had to be circumspect about it, but they’d been thorough all the same.

 **22:00.** Rollins reporting the hand-off to Rumlow’s team, still no asset. No trace of it slinking in the shadows trailing its target back home. No indication that it even saw Chapman off from the restaurant, if it _had_ been there, unseen. Seeing the asset when it was trying to hide was difficult at the best of times. 

Now, though, when hiding was the only thing it did aside from killing personnel… 

Sitwell finishes his second cup of coffee with a gulp and pages his secretary to bring him a third. 

It had still been worth keeping Rumlow’s team on-site around Chapman’s apartment, even with the restaurant no-show. “No glimpse” and “no trace” _don’t_ mean “not present and waiting.” Even though the team that swept the apartment while Chapman was out reported no sign of intrusion or ambush.

And Z.E.L.U.S. had been sure. Ninety-third percentile sure, according to the readout. It would be Chapman. Either just outside the restaurant or in an alley on the way home or inside the apartment. That target, those places, that night.

And yet… 

**23:15.** Rumlow reporting that Chapman was sound—and safely—asleep and none of the mics picked up anything amiss. Nothing at all to indicate that a terrified target was incapable of raising an alarm. Rooftops clear, streets clear, stairwells clear. Clear, clear, clear. Everything clear. No asset. No. Fucking. Asset.

 **01:30.** Barkholt reporting sustained silence on the police lines. Nothing out of the ordinary for a Friday night leading into a Saturday morning, nothing that so much as hinted at the asset’s work. 

Not even another of the copycat stars graffitied onto a wall or cut into a snitch’s back. There’d been at least two copycat attempts since the news broke to the public, but not even that last night.

Whoever the asset was targeting either hadn’t been found yet, or hadn’t been attacked yet.

 **02:45.** Rollins reporting from further out. No sign of the asset along a wider perimeter—not around Chapman’s apartment, not around the restaurant, not along the path between them.

But Z.E.L.U.S. had been sure. _So sure._

 **03:45.** Rumlow reporting a continued no-show. But it’s not too late, at that point, is it? Their earlier test run of Z.E.L.U.S.’s accuracy had demonstrated the asset was not so wedded to dark-of-night tactics that it would pass up an opportunity that arrived as late as dawn.

It might even be waiting outside their perimeter for them to decamp to base and check in for a formal debrief, planning to slip in and do unspeakable things to Chapman.

 **05:30.** Barkholt reporting in, passing along a police dispatch. Of course the asset hadn’t shown up to attack Chapman and be brought in by STRIKE. It had apparently been after Debenham the whole time. 

But Z.E.L.U.S. had been _certain._

It doesn’t make sense. 

Z.E.L.U.S. knows their asset as well as any program could, better than anyone or anything alive to date. Knows their asset from before their asset was an asset. How could Z.E.L.U.S. have misjudged? 

They’d thrown two whole STRIKE teams worth of eggs into that basket, and for nothing.

Most of the STRIKE agents were eager as hell and probably always will be, the fools, but it still costs money to send out a team. Expenditures he now has to hide somewhere, which is why he’d set Z.E.L.U.S. to the task of determining targets in the first place.

 **06:00.** Put a call to Hill, need to keep her and Fury in the loop, need to project camaraderie, at least for a while longer. Call up Rogers, though that had gone less smoothly than desired.

If anyone could anticipate the asset as well as Z.E.L.U.S. and that program’s tape-bound progenitor, it might be Rogers. That won’t be a pleasant revelation for Rogers, but when you signed on with HYDRA, you signed on for life, inside and out. 

Rogers might not like it, but the organization’s needs are more important than one super soldier’s dismay at learning what has become of another. It might be time to bring him fully on board, beyond playing courier for alien artifacts and absorbing intel from the Avengers.

By all counts, Rogers is a strategist. It will be nice to work with a flesh-and-blood counterpart in setting snares, instead of a green-lettered sentient supercomputer and its local clone. And maybe what they need is a new perspective where their asset is concerned. It’s behaving erratically to say the least. A fresh pair of eyes could help.

In the meantime, that just leaves Jasper facing down another dawn in this office, wracking his brain trying to figure out how everything keeps going wrong.

What even happened last night to throw everything off? What could have spooked their asset so badly that it _abandoned_ a sure mission objective? Because it’s inconceivable that Chapman hadn’t been a target. He’d gone where he always went, made the reservations he always made, sat at the table he always sat at.

They’d thought the asset might target him in an alley, perhaps tailing him from the dead drop or the bingo hall. Or that it might arrange for the park to explode or for the dry cleaner’s shop to cave in. Any of the lined up opportunities, given enough time.

There’d been several. Z.E.L.U.S. had allowed for two solid weeks of pattern before the asset would slither out of the shadows and tip itself into their hands. The best odds—Z.E.L.U.S. had assured them—were last night. 

There’s history there, Chapman and the asset and food. Enough history, and of the right sort, that it could easily be prompted to recklessness. And at a time of day the asset is known to favor, dusk becoming dark. Sunsets. The gray twilight hours when shadows behave strangely and people are both more alert and less perceptive.

But even sentient supercomputers are bound to strike out from time to time. Maybe too much of the original’s capacity is dedicated to perfecting the Insight algorithm and not enough on managing its remote duplicate. 

Well, Z.E.L.U.S. got the food element right, anyway. And Jasper isn’t ready yet to count Chapman as having _not_ been a mission objective last night.

Because Debenham is a reasonable substitute if the asset had been focused on Chapman for the man’s unsavory tastes in dinner entertainment. But surely if she’d been a primary target, the asset would have struck earlier in the evening, presumably while it was still feeling fresh from whatever hole it’s been sheltering in.

Jasper sighs and flips through the folder of transcribed reports again. It all comes down to the question of why. Why did the asset spook? Why did the asset spook _so badly_ that it shifted focus to a new target instead of doggedly pursuing the original?

The file is useless, and he flips it shut again, shuffles it under a few others. The easiest place to hide is in plain sight. The haystack to slide the needle into. And no one knows where to look on an artfully messy desk.

So. There was nothing out of place last night, nothing unexpected, nothing but Chapman laid out on a platter for the taking. The perfect bait at the perfect intersection of opportunity and motive.

And yet the man made it home without a scratch and slept soundly without so much as a bump in the night. He probably doesn’t even realize he spent all those hours with a STRIKE team watching his every move.

There’s nothing for it. The asset must have smelled the trap. They set it too tight, perhaps. Monitored it too closely. All the eggs in the same basket. Well, Jasper’s got more eggs and dozens of baskets. 

Time to spread those eggs around. 

* * *

It’s only been a handful of minutes since Rogers and Romanoff took their leave when the door closes behind Rumlow before Jasper’s even opened his mouth to invite him to have a seat. Typical. 

“That asshole is so far under cover it’s like he’s forgotten he’s one of us at all,” Rumlow growls as he yanks out a chair and sits. “I refuse to believe he just doesn’t recognize a knowing look when he sees one.”

Yes, he’d experienced much the same during their meeting, as well as a marked reluctance to let the Widow out of his sight. 

Rumlow runs a hand through his hair. “He’s stuck on her like gum on a shoe,” he says. “Doesn’t matter what you say, he’s going to find a way for Romanoff to be involved.”

Jasper nods. “Given the circumstances, he’s avoiding anything that would raise suspicion. Can’t be seen alone with any of us or there might be curiosity about the topic of discussion.” 

At least, that’s probably part of it. Another part of it could be trust—if he hasn’t yet gained Romanoff’s trust, he might want to keep himself in her presence to reassure her that she has eyes on him. But if _he_ doesn’t yet trust _her_ … And why would he? Why _should_ he? None of the rest of them do.

Still, it would be better if Rogers weren’t keeping so close an eye on his marks that he avoided responding to unofficial prompts to check in. Now that there’s a Stark involved and in close proximity, they can’t risk an electronic communication going undiscovered, and calling him out of the shadows directly unmasks them all.

“Didn’t even share the elevator,” Rumlow grumbles. “Too full to fit them both, so he’ll just wait with her for the next one, and so what if he and Barkholt weren’t done talking? It was a perfect chance to split off from her. Went through a shitload of effort setting that up.”

“Well, go through another shitload setting _this_ up,” Jasper says, passing a box of thumb drives over to him. “We’re switching from trap to Trojan. Barkholt should have the roster for you soon, and we need these in place before sundown.” 

“Already breaking out the roach traps?” Rumlow stirs the thumb drives with a finger, and then closes the box lid. “Are we that desperate?”

Jasper shakes his head. “Just impatient,” he lies. “I want this over with. The sooner we bring that thing in, the sooner you and your teams can recondition it, the sooner we can all breathe easy and let Insight take its course.”

“Could lose a lot of people this way.”

As if Rumlow minds. Jasper knows full well anyone not STRIKE is expendable as far as Rumlow’s concerned. 

The man does have a point, though. That’s two dozen targets, baited with tracking devices and pulled from Z.E.L.U.S.’s algorithms to represent the gamut of high ranks, low ranks, and everything in between. Between them all, at least two of them are going to die triangulating the asset’s bolt hole. 

But by the third, they’ll have narrowed it down for sure.

“Only a few of them,” he says. “When we have our location, we close in and you do what you do best.”

Rumlow laughs and stands up. 

“Oh, I’ll do what I do best, have no worries there. But a good general leads his troops from behind the lines.” He glances around the room and then back at Jasper. “Wouldn’t you agree? Up here in your office, never dirtying up your hands _or_ your dick?”

Jasper knows better than to shudder or otherwise rise to the bait. Let the fools spend their time breaking the asset down for psychological scrap before shoving it all back together into the shape they need. He’ll keep his pants zipped, thanks, and his dick out of crazy.

Worst case scenario, when the blasted thing finally comes for him, his death will be quick.

“Get those distributed,” he says. “Give them whatever lies you need to tell to ensure they keep this on their person or close to it. Visible. I don’t want to waste personnel if the asset neglects to search their house after carving them up.”

“Be better off hiding the trackers in the pantry if that’s your goal. Jelly jars, cookie tins, maybe a package of lunch meat.”

“If this doesn’t pan out, we might do that.” Jasper gives the box of thumb drives a pointed look. “We’re running out of time.”

Thankfully, Rumlow gets the message and leaves without Jasper having to spell it out and risk a confrontation over who outranks who. That’s a STRIKE leader with ambitions, however well he hides it. And climbing the ladder in HYDRA generally requires a handhold to pull yourself up with—often a firm grip on the dagger in the back of the guy ahead of you.

That’s one thing the asset will be good for, as far as Jasper is concerned. Pierce thought of the thing as a tool, but his vision was limited to… baser functions the tool could perform. But Jasper has other ideas. Better ideas. 

Bigger ideas.

What better to guard his back than the tool that wants little more than to put a knife in the guts of everyone it’s been used by before?

And Jasper? He’s recognizable, certainly. But where the others have seen the violence of the death toll and sworn to redouble their efforts in that direction, Jasper has seen it and connected it to the cause: each murder is scarily adhering to the pattern of abuse those victims perpetrated.

Jasper hasn’t so much as laid a finger on the asset, let alone shoved a dick in it.

If there’s anyone in HYDRA positioned to take over as this geography’s HYDRA Supreme, it’ll be him, protected by _his_ asset, an asset that holds no grudges against him and plenty of grudges against everyone else. 

Jasper’s phone notification goes off and he looks down at the screen. Fantastic; this is exactly the artificial intelligence program that was next on his list.

He pulls up the app with its green-on-black lettering, and sees what Z.E.L.U.S. has for him. 

>> You have placed the drives? Agent Rumlow has left the building with them.

Tension he didn’t even realize he’d been holding drains from his shoulders, and he types his response.

Rumlow is placing them, telling them to keep the drives on their person for security purposes. Can't let valuable data fall into the wrong hands during a time like this, can they? And to be given such a responsibility implies corresponding protection. They'll gladly take their trackers and keep them in their pockets. Are you sure about the target list? Last night was a bust.

>> My calculations are impeccable. The asset was there. It merely eluded you.

Jasper sighs. Impeccable calculations aren’t an even match for feet on the ground, but he knows it’s as pointless to argue with Z.E.L.U.S. as with that _other_ artificial intelligence system that designed it. Besides, he suspects the same: that the asset was merely better hidden than STRIKE was prepared for.

>> The asset will certainly make another attempt on Chapman tonight. The cursor blinks brightly on the black background. >> It is unclear whether the hit will take place at the cinema or in his home.

He frowns at the screen and types a response.

I understand why he’s getting a tracker. If the man finally manages to get himself killed, having a tracker on his person disguised as data to be accessed and possibly used to find more targets will do the job, without question. The others confuse me. Callahan in particular. Did they even interact beyond mechanical repairs?

>> Callahan has long been a prime target. It was statistically unlikely that he survived Goldman by a single night. According to my calculations, he has now risen to the top.

For what, though? Goldman himself had been a shock. All he’d ever done was drive around a transport vehicle. Maybe listen to some obnoxious music. But the asset had cut him to little pieces and stuffed him in a hotel closet. So on some op or other, Goldman must have made unconventional use of such a closet.

But the other… Callahan worked on the arm. That’s it. Maybe a forced blow job or two. Maybe some burns. Everyone else on the bait list has been responsible for much, much worse.

>> It is important that no STRIKE teams interfere once the trackers are in place.

He isn’t stupid. You don’t put a trojan horse out there in the wild and then interrupt when it gets inspected and rolled through the gates. You don’t camp out around a trojan any more than you spray RAID around a roach bait. You _want_ them to take it to their nest, and they can’t do that spooked or dead.

 _He_ isn’t stupid, but STRIKE… 

I’ll tell them to mind their own business. Give them other tasks tonight.

They can have the asset when it reveals its hideout to them, but in order to set up that ambush, they’ll need to let this other happen naturally. And if a STRIKE team sees the asset, odds aren’t even worth measuring that they’ll attack. Or it will. Either way, no prize.

>> Allow the Avengers to investigate the crime scene. Alone.

Jasper sits back and stares at the lines on his phone. Let them… Why? Why let them gather any more information than they already have?

Reasoning? he asks.

>> They grow suspicious. Already they have tried to infiltrate our systems and pull information from our files.

You prevented that, I hope. The program had better have prevented it. Pierce hadn’t allowed Z.E.L.U.S. full access to the whole of S.H.I.E.L.D. because it’s pleasant to work with. Or because its progenitor is already twined through every branch S.H.I.E.L.D. has to offer, and has been from the start.

>> I gave them crumbs to keep them busy. This next crime scene will be a puzzle to likewise occupy them.

Jasper has his doubts, but makes a note to keep Barkholt from sending any STRIKE teams on the scene before he can let the Avengers take a good pass at it.

Shit. He’ll have to invent other things for the STRIKE teams to be doing. There’s another chunk of his day, wasted.

Anything else?

>> Hail HYDRA.

Jasper types in the only safe response:

Hail HYDRA.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings: References are made to HYDRA Trash Party elements that have occurred in the past, and off the page.
> 
> End note: Hmmm. I wonder what the Z in Z.E.L.U.S. stands for… 🤔


	12. Interlude | Cause you pain and make it last

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from [“Dangerous Tonight”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVpvCxxaHqE) by Alice Cooper.

**—Washington D.C. | Friday, 01 June 2012 | 10:15 p.m.—**

They are waiting for it.

The researcher has his pattern, is back to his pattern, is going down his list, is— And they are waiting for it to follow him. Waiting, waiting, they know it too well.

Friday, go to the building with all the lights on the signs, the rectangle fantasy signs on the exterior, all the people drawn so close and overlapping. Stand in the line, talk to the person behind the window with the hole in it, get the little piece of paper, go inside through the glass doors.

Inspect the paper. There is no message. Hand the paper to another person, let the person tear the paper in half, vanish further into the building where it cannot see beyond the lights and tacky carpet ramps and stairs from outside. Where all it can see are the same fantasy signs on the walls inside as are all over the outside.

The researcher will leave the building through a different door, a solid metal door in the back of the building. It had been planning to be waiting for him there, to greet the researcher when he emerged, and never mind the researcher’s dining table for the pieces of meat to gather under it in their pile. 

The door is in a dark and shadowed place, a good place for extracting everything the researcher has inside, all the data it is the researcher’s turn to part with. A lonely and unfamiliar place for the researcher to die in, far better than his own comfortable home.

And no glowing screens to tempt it into failure.

And the researcher would be alone going through the door, always comes out of it long after the other people have left in a flood, all of them saying things about how good or how bad “it” was, whatever they were all doing in the building. 

Arguing about whether it was a waste of time or money. Whether they would see it again, whatever it is they’ve seen in there. Whether the effects were good or bad. Whether there was too much or too little or the right amount of CGI, whatever that is. Whether it was believable. 

All the people saying so many things, passing all of their judgments on whatever is in the building.

It was _going_ to wait for him and then the researcher would not have to wonder whether he would return to see whatever is inside the building another time, because he would have no eyes to see it with.

It can pass judgment now, too, and the researcher does not do well.

But they are waiting in the darkness near the door when it arrives. Waiting for it. Why else would they be there. 

Some on the roof—and that is a perch for _assets_ , not for STRIKE agents!—and some behind the metal boxes that have only meager rewards inside, and some in the hedge of greenery it was intending to occupy while it waited for the researcher to appear and suffer for it.

It could pick them off. 

Could slice up the throats of the ones in the tangle of leaves and then tangle what’s left of them in the branches. Could make fleshy shingles out of the ones on the roof and let them leak blood into the gravel-covered concrete, pools of it, like it rained. Could distribute the ones behind the metal boxes evenly among those metal boxes, a few parts in each box, not so meager a reward anymore.

But then they will know that it was here. 

No. _That_ is not the problem. They were going to know that it was here because it was going to leave the star for them to find, to show how well it did, that it achieved the mission objectives and removed the researcher, that it cut him into small pieces and earned the reward.

They were going to know. That is half of the point, for the handlers-operators-trainers-technicians to know, and for the rest of the world to know.

But they were going to know _after_ , were going to _find out_ , to find the researcher, to find the star, and only then to know that it was here.

If it strikes now, they will know that it was here and did its job, but the ones that sent this STRIKE team to wait for it will know that they were right, that they guessed where it would go, that they were able to wait for it because they knew it so well. 

They know that it will be here, they know that it will wait here, they know _it_ very well. It was their asset before it broke apart the thawing team and sliced up the handlers in the vault and fled. Before it stole will from the operator.

Of course they know it well.

The surprise is how stupid they have been so far, not that they are thinking now.

It glares at the door the researcher will come through, glares at the STRIKE agents hiding around that door, glares and glares and glares so hard the eyes can hardly see.

Not tonight. Not when they think they can wait for it and it will not see them waiting.

Does it wait for them to give up? For the researcher to come through the door and the STRIKE team to take his report and send him to his home? For the STRIKE team to call in, give _their_ report, go to _their_ homes? Does it wait and wait and starve and wait?

They will not see it here, in the darkness between the abandoned truck and the wall of stones inside the metal lattice cage. They did not see it arriving, and will not see it waiting.

And starving.

No. It could wait and maybe even follow the researcher if the STRIKE team does not trail him home. Could cut him up in another location… But that is what it _ought_ to do, if it was their asset. 

The mission is the most important thing. The mission is the _most important thing_. It cannot fail to accomplish the mission objective and cannot be put off the target a second time. It cannot fail, and so it must improvise, come up with another way to kill the target, the researcher, the nightmare, _the target._

_Tonight._ Because the mission is the most important thing.

That is what it would do, if it was their asset.

And they are waiting for it. Were here before it. Waiting in exactly the right location. Because they know it.

So it will let them wait. Let them wait and wait and never find it, never catch it, never take it back, never, never going back. No.

It lets a soft breath pass warm and slow, patient, through the killing face and slips from between the truck and the wall of stones with its prison of wire mesh holding them in place. Too dangerous to go up the stone wall and melt into the grassy area where there are trees but no people. They will look for it there, the STRIKE agents that know it so well. The ones on the roof are already watching the trees.

Off comes the killing face, the mouth with its hunger and the eyes with their lenses of night. Off and away, hook onto tac gear. Here. And here. Ready for later. On and off at will because it has will, stole will, can decide these things.

Cover the knives that shine and reflect, the bright fangs that will have to go without slicing up the researcher, that will miss out on carving a STRIKE team into pieces. Adjust them in their sheaths so they don’t shine. Only the inky black talons can show, the secret, greedy edges that drink up the darkness _and_ the light, and that send out so few telling flashes in return. 

It did well to put on the full tac gear for this op. The moon is too bright and the clouds too thin for it to leave the metal arm bare, to let the star announce that it is here. They will have to hide under the sleeve, and it did _so well_ to consider that. This will earn it an even better reward once it accomplishes its secondary objective.

Tip the chin like this, lift the left hand to the ear, move the hair to cover the metal, hide it from the street lights above that will make it shine—see? it has a phone, like everyone else, tucked here between chin and hand under the hair while it searches the torso for keys—bend the spine, let the feet fall like so, make the shuffling sounds on the asphalt like the people do. 

Here are the keys, this buckle will do nicely, make the little metal clink, jingle of buckle-keys, it has things to unlock, maybe one of these cars. Yes, like it is a person, slouching-walking-strolling through the field of empty cars until it finds the right one. Just another of the people and nothing worth looking at.

It, too, has seen whatever it is that the building contains, and it thinks that it was good, the thing in the building. Not a waste of money. Not a waste of time. It would see it again, whatever it is. The thing in the building was so worth it. The thing in the building was “awesome.” It cannot believe how good the “effects” were. The things they can do with “CGI” these days. 

Almost like it was real.

* * *

The mechanic is easy to find, easy to track, easy to anticipate, even without a schedule and a pattern. 

Easy to trap alone in the house with the basement full of things that are useful but never used.

Street signs that belong on street corners telling people where they are and where they are going… but that are pinned to walls. Flicker-buzz neon signs that belong on the walls in seedy dump bars where targets sometimes deal their deals… but that are sharing space with the others, doing nothing to light the room.

Trunks that should be holding luggage or assets folded small but have hardly been opened… yet that sport stickers from around the world slapped across their sides, a sticky-glossy lie told to no one in a room where no one seems to go.

The decorations around the room seem to say, “here lives a lying asshole who wants to treat useful things in senseless ways that defeat their purpose; kill him slow.”

Well, it will oblige.

And shelves of equipment for walking around in the woods when he does not have any need to be in the woods. Sleeping among the bears and wolves when he doesn’t have to. Walking the length of a mountain spine when there is no need for it—not when he had the transport driver to spend time with.

Items that say, “here is a man who feels he owns the urban landscape and also the natural one; shove a tent peg through his mouth and out the back of his head.”

It would oblige, but it has better ideas about what will happen to the mechanic’s mouth.

In one corner, there are boards for “surfing” that show no signs of having ever been wet. Skis that don’t appear to have seen snow. Little white leather balls with red stitching and faded black signatures, all of it looking so artificial. 

Objects that say, “the man who owns these things pretends to be a sportsman but does not actually perform the sports; hammer a ski pole up his ass.”

Well. That isn’t entirely dissimilar to its own ideas. Something will certainly be going up the mechanic’s ass. Something metal with five digits. _Up or down._

The transport driver and the mechanic. _Come on. Up your ass or down your throat. This dick’s gotta get in you somehow, so which direction’s it gonna be?_

The house is easy to enter, easy to search for others, easy to lock behind itself when there are no others but the mechanic. The only person in the house and the only person who will experience what happens in this house.

Easy, easy, easy.

_Up or down, up or down. Come on. Make a decision. Tell us how you want it. We know you want it._

Holding the reward, demanding the answers, telling the lies. How to get the reward, what are the answers, why are you lying? Giving it the reward and taking it away. Eating the reward in front of it. _You did not do well. What’s it gonna be? Up or down?_

The mechanic has never made anything easy before. _Open up you bastard. Take it. Hold still or you go back in the chair._

The mechanic doesn’t cut it after he pushes into it and chokes it and hits it across the face. The mechanic has the tools, the other tools. The mechanic burns it. Uses the torch on it. Makes the skin blister and swell and burst. 

The mechanic hands the torch to the transport driver. _Have some fun. They won’t mind. It won’t tell us how it wants it, so we’ll have to go both ways._

Laughter. Laughter and pain and so much hunger. 

The reward out of reach, the closet closing in, the pain. _Up or down._ Both and then both and then _both_ and then— And then punishment for not enjoying— No reward for— Not allowed to choose, but wants it to stop, please stop, but then both and both and both and— 

But no. Not now. Not this time. Not again. There is no going back.

It shakes its head and breathes. Pulls at the hair.

This time, it is the one asking the questions. It is the one to decide whether the reward is earned. Up out of his throat or down out of his ass, that reward has _not been earned._

There is no return to the concrete and the men with the grins and the stolen rewards and the pain and the pain and the pain. No more terror and hopelessness. No more helplessness. No more torches and searing letter-shapes into the skin, again and again until the letter-shapes stay.

No more up or down, except this last time, with it asking the questions. 

No more handlers-operators-trainers-technicians.

No more mechanic, soon.

The mechanic will wake up again, and his head will hurt and he will wonder where he is and how he got there. And then he will see where he is and he will see it waiting for him in the shadows and he will know how he got there. And he will know fear.

Little wooden writing table with the typewriter and the stack of words-on-pages. Loops of rope and tent stakes and lamps that are new but are made to look old. Shelf after shelf of black disc plates in crumbling paper sleeves. And the asset, too. Sitting and waiting and waiting and silent.

The mechanic with arms up, tied to railing, low enough that his legs still support him, high enough that he cannot scream loud or for long. Ribs and diaphragm and lungs and air and wheezy bellows breaths hard and shallow and desperate and gasping—it knows that so well. It has shared that knowledge with the mechanic.

It is generous.

And there is the mechanic waking up, the mechanic panicking, the mechanic writhing in his terror and his terror and his _terror,_ until all that terror bleeds the energy out of his body and he sags again. It will come back. Terror always comes back, is a swiftly recharging battery, a self-filling reservoir.

It stands up then. Walks closer. Struggling prey will lash out, insufficiently crippled targets will try to fight back. This will be less clean that way. Simple matter, though, to dislocate left knee, slice right hamstring, let the mechanic sag against the rope and try to support himself on the right leg, useless now as anything but a pedestal to balance on, a fleshy bone-filled pillar.

Now the time is right, the target is prepared, the killing can begin. Slowly. 

It stands close to the mechanic—too close, too close, _too close_ , but it is okay now, it has the power now, the mechanic will touch it or it will touch the mechanic, and the mechanic will die. It stands close, and it looks into the mechanic’s eyes. It does not look away. 

It reaches down, unfastens the belt holding the mechanic’s pants in place, jingle jangle clinking of buckle and canvas—not leather, why, does not matter—and listens to the mechanic breathe his terror, feels the mechanic shudder his despair. It slips the button loose. It pulls the zipper down. It stares at the mechanic’s eyes, unblinking, silent. 

The mechanic _thinks_ he knows what is coming next. Thinks that this is _turnabout_. Thinks that this is _fair play_. Thinks that this is the asset’s turn. _Dicks out boys._

The mechanic should _be_ so lucky.

The pants and the flimsy soft things underneath—little shorts, pointless, no reason, why, blue with yellow ducks—go into the pile with the loafer shoes and the argyle pattern socks in pinks and greens. The mechanic will not need them. The mechanic will not have any use for them.

The mechanic will have no use for the little USB drive in the pants pocket. 

It looks at the drive, considers. Data. Numbers. Names. _Addresses._ A drive like this means data, information it can use once it has put the drive into a computer. It does not have a computer to put this into. But there _are_ computers out there, and it can access them.

For later, then. 

It slides the drive into a pocket of its own before turning the typewriter around, with the paper inside it, with the stupid words the mechanic wanted to fill a book with. Manuscript, maybe. Whatever. It has looked at the page. Garbage about “music scenes” and “struggling bands” and “interpersonal dynamics.” 

It will fill the back of the page with better things.

Things that matter more to the mechanic.

The mechanic follows it with his eyes wide, wide, wide with terror. Good. He has earned that. He follows its fingers as it deliberately pushes down on one key and then another and then another. As it presses the key to move the paper to the side, k-chk k-chk k-chk ding, pushes the paper back to the other side. 

Turns the roller until the machine brings the words up high and clear on the page.

up or down

Those are words that will make sense to the mechanic. It knows. It practiced. Rehearsed the sounds of the words, mapped out the shapes—letters—that make those sounds when people say them with their mouths, and when people read them to themselves. Matched the shapes and sounds. Here is meaning.

The mechanic stares through fear-slick eyes, makes out the shapes, tries to process the words. This looks like a challenge for him. Probably, it is. It knows very well how terror can make thinking difficult. It has spent its entire life having difficulty thinking. But the mechanic has spoken these words, can read these words, knows these words. It _knows_ that he knows the words.

But the mechanic shakes his head, snivels, whines that he doesn’t know what it means. He doesn’t understand. Oh god why me, why now, please no. So many of us were worse to you, I can give you their names, please.

It ignores the fear words running out of the mechanic’s terrified mouth like it ignores the tears that drip down the mechanic’s terrified face and the urine that arcs out fitfully from the mechanic’s terrified dick, that splashes and splatters, that finally dribbles down his legs. His terrified, trembling legs. 

It presses more keys, puts more words on the page. Slowly. So slowly. Just like it practiced. Worth the pain in the head to make the mechanic know what he is about to experience, what is about to happen to him, what it is going to do to him. Worth the throbbing behind the eyes if that will mean the mechanic can fully imagine the possibilities.

K-chk k-chk k-chk goes the typewriter. Shapes that are letters, letters that become words, words followed by tabs of empty space to the end of the line.

Ding. Push the carriage to the right.

K-chk k-chk k-chk. 

Then it waits and waits and waits for the mechanic to open his eyes again. It has time for this. The mechanic has time for this. There is so much time for this.

The mechanic finally closes his mouth and stops his fear words spilling out of it. His eyes are still red and wet, but his dick has finished leaking at last. 

It turns the roller to move the page up and up and up so the new words can be read. Two lines. The mechanic was unconscious for a long time. It has had a long time to pick the shapes that make the sounds that make meaning. 

And the mechanic knows how this goes. The mechanic has said these things, or something close, before. It holds the metal hand in front of the mechanic’s face and makes a pincer with thumb against fingers. It will grab, yes, with the metal hand.

It steps away so the mechanic can see the words it has created on the page.

that stomach has got to come out 

which direction will it go

The mechanic reads the words on the paper, the two lines.

It smiles at him, wide and sharp. With teeth. Pincer with the metal fingers. Grab and grab.

_Grin._

The mechanic begins to sob.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warning: References and flashbacks to HYDRA Trash Party activities are pretty bad this chapter, with dialogue. Also, impending horrible things are slated to happen to a man’s entire digestive tract. Actual horrible things—past or future—are not depicted on the page.


	13. Clint | And another one gone, and another one gone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title comes from [“Another One Bites the Dust,”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY0WxgSXdEE) by Queen.

**—Washington D.C. | Saturday, 02 June 2012 | 6:30 a.m.—**

“We’ve got another one,” comes Natasha’s voice from the hallway, chipper and lively and enthusiastic and all manner of things it is _not_ time for.

Clint groans and rolls over, burying his head in a throw pillow. This is the problem with crashing on the couch after watching TV so late into the night that it becomes the next day. No one respects that the morning after.

Stark seconds his groan from the nearby chair, awake but at least not happy about the news. “Already?” 

It’s muffled slightly by Clint’s pillow but still carries the “oh, come _on_ ” tones of someone Clint would be exchanging a solidarity fist bump with except that Stark has been nattering away for at least an hour by now.

“I’m not even over yesterday’s midnight garden party yet.” Stark shifts around in what is probably a melodramatic pose, knowing him. “I don’t think my stomach’s ever going to recover.”

“Already, yes.” Natasha sits on Clint’s calves and makes herself comfortable. “Mark Callahan, 42, another S.H.I.E.L.D. engineer.”

There’s some kind of victorious squawk from Stark’s direction.

Clint considers worming his way out from under Natasha to sit up, and then merely slides his throw pillow under his head instead of on top of it as he looks out into the living room. “We know that name.”

“Do we _ever_ ,” Stark says, getting up to wheel around the ridiculous, door-sized, double-sided whiteboard he’s decked out in string and magnets. “Right here on our personnel list. Our very first fruit out of the data garden!”

Natasha looks almost fond as she sends a tiny smile Stark’s way. “His bandmates found him in the basement when they showed up for rehearsals at 6.”

“Six?” Clint _does_ squirm around at that, and Natasha allows him to sit upright. “As in 6 AM? As in not very long ago at all? What kind of band practices before dawn?”

“The kind whose neighbors apparently _did_ hear some screaming the night before,” she says with a wry smile, “but who thought to themselves, ‘it’s probably nothing.’”

Stark looks over from his work winding red string around a new magnet on the board. “You mean the kind whose neighbors heard screaming and thought ‘finally, I _hate_ that guy.’”

“Finally?” Cap asks as he joins them, hair still wet from the shower after his stupidly early run. What is it with these people… “Was it Senator Stern?”

“Why would it be Stern?” Stark taps a dry erase marker on the board. “What do you know that I don’t? And how do you know it when I don’t?”

Cap shrugs and heads for the kitchen for a piece of toast. “Well, you ‘hate that guy,’ so.” 

“I don’t think I hate anyone enough to wish this brand of misery on them,” he says. “What’s the damage this time, Nit-Nat? And which STRIKE loser’s babysitting us?”

“No STRIKE Alpha this time,” she says. “This one is all ours, with as much or as little local support as we want. They’ve taken pictures and put up the crime scene tape. That’s all. As for damage… Funny you should mention your stomach.” 

She holds up the notepad she’d jotted notes on. “According to the ones who found him, ‘So many guts, oh my god, the smell.’”

Stark grimaces. “Eugh, it’s gonna be another gross one.”

“Police dispatch phoned it in to STRIKE, just like they agreed to,” Natasha says. “Sitwell passed it along to us by way of Hill.” 

“STRIKE Kappa ran interference?” Clint asks. Because if it’s Barkholt’s team involved, then even if they go purely with local MPD detectives and forensics teams and no S.H.I.E.L.D. agents aside from Natasha and himself, everything they find is still going straight back to Rumlow’s team.

“As far as I know.” Natasha shares a small grimace with him. “That’s pretty standard, though,” she adds for the benefit of the other two.

“Meaning?” Cap drifts back into the living room with his toast. 

Clint scrunches his face up again. “Cody Barkholt is team lead for STRIKE Kappa. If the cops know something interesting, he knows it, too. The whole Kappa team’s elbow deep in the MPD’s pants, and vice versa.”

“Charming,” Cap says with a slight grimace before taking a bite. He waves the rest of the toast as he chews. “So it wasn’t Senator Stern. Who was it? And why do we hate that guy?”

“Mark Callahan,” Natasha answers, “and we don’t. He was an engineer for S.H.I.E.L.D. Report just says he lost his stomach. As for how, Hill says she’ll leave that to us to determine. She sounded amused. Disturbed, severe, but a little amused underneath.”

“What do we know about him?” Cap asks. “Any insider information you can add?”

“Never worked with him,” Clint says. “He was on internal projects only. Stuff down in research mostly.” 

And probably one of those projects got him on their guy’s kill list. No telling what project that was, whether it was a success or still in trials, whether he was any good at it. And something else is sticking in his mind. Some other thing they know about Callahan, some other place his name showed up… 

It’ll come to him well after it’d be helpful, though. If it doesn’t show up when he needs it, it’ll show up right afterward. Like a great comeback. Funny how brains work—or don’t—in that way. 

“Dibs on staying here,” Stark says, already swiping in assorted directions on his tablet. “If this dude lost his stomach last night, I’m going to lose mine slogging through the pieces of another mulched human.”

And yeah, that’s fair. Clint’s not exactly looking forward to another of these so soon, either. But he might have to, depending on how Natasha and Cap divvy it up. What’s going on here, anyway? Paperwork? Ugh.

“Besides,” Stark adds, “I’m still working on Brucey-boy. Need to lure the unjolly green giant out to play. No time for bodies. Only data. Numeric data. Not organic.”

Ugh, ugh, ugh. Paperwork, or dead body. Paperwork, or dead body. Man, this should not be a hard decision to make.

Natasha raises an eyebrow at him. “Well? Going to get up to check out the Soldier’s handiwork? Or do Rogers and I ride again?”

Clint shrugs and sits up straighter with effort, probably only somewhat pulling off an energetic gung-ho pose. “Let’s go check out a corpse, then.”

“I’m willing to—” Cap starts.

Clint waves him off. “No, no, I’ve made my decision.” He blinks. “But I’m gonna need so much coffee.”

* * *

They find this victim mostly in one piece. Mostly.

And it’s little wonder Callahan’s bandmates beat it out of there quick with only a note as to the smell.

In a basement full of pretentious hipster horseshit and wannabe outdoorsman paraphernalia, the decor has been redone in the style of haunted house for Halloween, complete with streamers of intestines. Sadly, these are the real deal and not crepe paper in pinkish gray.

If there were eyes in a bowl in this haunted house, they wouldn’t be peeled grapes. 

Callahan’s eyes aren’t in a bowl, though. They’re in what’s left of his face after something massive smashed its way through his mouth and—from the looks of it—down his throat. One of the eyes is bloodshot and still firmly in its socket. The other has bulged out slightly, out of the socket but still in the eyelid.

Clint imagines it’ll fall to dangle on a nerve if they jostle the corpse with its protruding, inverted esophagus. Good thing they came through with a camera already.

“Can you believe they let us on the scene right after they took prelim snaps of this mess?” he asks. “Last time around, they were boxing up skull fragments and sliding fingernails into envelopes before we even got clearance.”

Natasha agrees by way of wordless mutter. Then, “If they thought it would relieve our suspicions, they’re wrong.”

“Oh, for sure. For sure.” Clint gets another closeup of Callahan’s… well, general head area more than “face”… and then counts teeth. Looks like he’s got all of three molars still in place. Tenacious little teeth, molars.

“I’m still surprised we don’t have some forensics squad scurrying around underfoot, though, chasing us out of certain areas like last time. Makes me wonder what we’re seeing that they want us to see, or what we’re missing that they already swiped. Something.” 

He flicks a tooth across the room, and then thinks better of it. Tampering with evidence or something. Aw, why’d he do that? He’s not going to be allowed on any crime scene ever again at the rate he’s going today.

That might be why, actually. 

Natasha shrugs. “They might also be thinking that we’ll overthink it and—”

“Aw, not a game of who thinks who will think of what before who else has thought of what else. I hate that game.”

Natasha moves further into the room with a critical eye. “Even so, we might be playing it.”

Clint grimaces and then gets on with his task: body inspection. He’s been focusing on the face so hard because it’s an absolute nightmare to look at. The disaster you see coming for miles and can’t bring yourself to look away from, like those porchside tornado spotters who get caught up in filming until it’s too late.

It’s not that he wants to look at the face. The face is busted open at the jaw seam with most of the teeth missing and the eyes bugged out and the fleshy tube of esophagus dangling out like a perverse cartoon tongue or an elephant trunk of ground meat… 

It’s just… He can’t stop picturing what must have happened to result in this. He _wants_ to stop, but… the mouth. It’s missing most of the teeth, but it’s got a lot of esophagus coming out of it, all inside out like someone reached in and grabbed his stomach to drag it out. Just grabbed it from the inside and _pulled._

The stomach is still missing, and Clint is hoping that’s not today’s souvenir. If it is, they’ve gone way off the deep end and are dealing with someone who can’t be saved at all, someone who just needs to be put down for his own sake, either taken out quick or locked somewhere nice and padded for eternity.

Whichever, but still put down more gently than this poor Callahan bastard got it.

Because, somewhat impossibly, the top half is so much _less awful_ than the… er. Tail end. Literally. Because he’s got a… well, a tail. Sort of.

Protruding from Callahan’s ass is his prolapsed rectum, followed by his large intestine, inside out, flecked with blood and shit, and just ghastly on the whole. Stark wouldn’t have done too well with this one. Somehow, tiny pieces you can hardly recognize are way easier to deal with than loops of intestines ripped out of an ass and strung from the ceiling.

Clint swallows. He’s not going to puke. He’s better than that. Also, his own stomach is full of coffee, and he’s not wasting coffee for a murder investigation.

He wonders vaguely what the order of operations happened to be last night, whether this guy lived through the fisting to end all fistings and then had his mouth and throat busted open, or whether he choked on a fist and got to be nice and dead for round two.

Clint has his hopes about which happened first. He also has his guesses. They don’t line up this time.

He looks up at the sound of Natasha’s little huff and finds her pinching a piece of paper between thumb and index finger. “He left a note this time?” he asks.

That’s new. That’s really new. That might give them an edge finally. Handwriting analysis, word choice, psychological profiling beyond “he’s violent and nutso and sending messages and doesn’t like criminals,” which they already know because it takes all of that to scatter half-inch-thick cubes of person all over a garden in suburbia and slice stars into a foursome of armed gang members terrorizing a neighborhood. 

“What’s it say? Go on and read it to me.”

She shakes her head and instead walks it over to him. “This is— You should read it for yourself.” A playful smile crosses her lips, but her eyes are full of calculations. “Get the full effect. Add your own inflections. Draw your own conclusions.” 

Clint frowns, but takes the paper. On the one side is a bunch of copy that he ignores because Natasha wasn’t looking at that. On the other side… 

  
  
  


up or down

  
  


that stomach has got to come out 

which direction will it go

  
  


you did not do well

you do not get to keep the stomach

you have not earned it

  
  


:-)

  
  
  


Clint stares at the paper, shivers, reads it a few more times, stares some more. 

“Is that a _smiley face?_ ”

“I’m more interested in the ‘you did not do well’ lines.” She reaches out to tap the paper in his hands. “Callahan didn’t _earn_ his own stomach. Didn’t ‘do well enough’ to keep it. They clearly knew each other, worked with each other. This reads like turned tables, Clint. This victim may have been a handler.”

He nods. “You’re thinking this sort of thing is what total gastric bypass here said to our slippery little murder buddy all the time. That he hadn’t done well, or didn’t get some reward or other. So now it’s his turn, and he’s throwing the words back in this dude’s face.”

Clint reads the note again, then hands it back to her. “You’re _thinking_ it, but you’re not _sure_. Why?”

Natasha shakes her head and looks over the note. “Because he _did_ do well. He really was a slippery murder buddy. The Soldier never had a mark he didn’t eliminate. The Soldier was never caught during a mission, never failed a mission, never left a whisper behind.”

She sighs. “Clint, you don’t get to be a legend like this, a Red Room boogey man haunting even fully trained black widows, if you aren’t good. You can’t get sloppy even once and still be a ghost story like he is, a ghost story that has very important, very _dangerous_ people looking over their shoulders.”

“So then why tell him he didn’t do a good job,” Clint says, picking up her line of reasoning with an understanding nod. “Right. He’d know full well he _did_ do a good job. Why bother trying to lie to him?” 

Except… 

Except gaslighting is a thing. Twisting reality in on itself until the lie is firmer than any truth. Adding in a touch of fear for the failure that wasn’t there… That was part of the widow training, so why wouldn’t it be part of the Soldier’s?

“But ‘Tasha,” he says. “You were so certain that he could and would hunt you down and—” he nods toward what’s left of Callahan “—you know, if you messed up. And you weren’t alone in that. Even the head of the Red Room, even Madame B. was worried, right?”

She nods, grim.

And yeah, he gets it. He’s heard all about her years with the Red Room. Everything she can remember, she’s told him. Hell, they’ve searched some answers out together between official ops. It’s not just anyone who threatens a widow and is taken seriously. And it’s practically no one who threatens the woman training those widows.

Except the Soldier was the boogey man waiting for them when they failed, even when they didn’t truly fail. And if he was manipulated the same way they were… Using the same tactics… 

“So he’s the big bad wolf, sure,” Clint says with a shrug. “The one they set up to get you if you ever you failed. But I’m betting there’s something even the big bad wolf is terrified of, and I think we found it.” Clint points to the note. “Not a bigger, badder wolf, but failure itself.”

Failure dogging the steps of a master assassin? Fear of finally missing a mark. Fear of being caught the one time it would take to lose his status. Fear of so much as whispering on the job. If anything less than perfection is failure and the Soldier has a perfect record… 

This is a ghost haunted by the prospect of a blemish on that record.

* * *

Natasha makes exactly enough noise entering the kitchen as Clint needs to not startle when she speaks, because she’s nice like that. Clint appreciates it, anyway, though he’s low-key proud of himself for not jumping, all the same.

“Find anything interesting?” she asks.

Hell yeah, he did. He’s never seen a fridge this bare. Not even his own back in the day when lack of income and a roommate with the munchies conspired to make even day-old pizza a rare feast. 

Based on the empty cartons and food wrappers all over the floor—and the lack of vegan take-out, sliced organic tofurkey and almond milk kefir that used to be _in_ those cartons and wrappers—their guy really chowed down after pulling stomachs out of people’s throats.

“Well, looks like our Soldier worked up an appetite while working over this hipster dude.” Clint closes the fridge door and turns to lean against it. “Left the jar of Vegenaise untouched, though, so at least he’s got _some_ good taste.”

Natasha inspects the cupboards with their doors hanging off the hinges and their jumbled contents, and gives a box of Cap’n Crunch a shake. “Huh. Didn’t think this was vegan.” She puts the box back, making it the only item still standing in the whole kitchen.

“Think it’s a statement?” she asks. “To go along with the stomach removal? Or was he just that hungry?”

Clint shrugs and takes the box. “He ate that other lady out of house and home before turning her into mulch and doing some midnight gardening.” He opens the box and grabs out a handful of cereal to eat. “Maybe killin’s jus’ hungry work,” he mumbles around his mouthful.

Or, he thinks, maybe he’s like a housecat that got left at home without food and now wants to gobble up everything in sight. Maybe a housecat that was scolded and had its food taken away. Maybe the price of failure is starvation. 

Kind of sad to think about that while crunching his way through this box of cereal. If _he’d_ been here post-tummy-untuck, he’d have skipped the tofurkey and gone straight for the good stuff, that’s for sure. Poor guy. None of the non-perishables have been touched. Maybe he didn’t recognize them as food.

Natasha doesn’t even raise an eyebrow at his evidence-devouring. “Well, we know it’s _dirty_ work. The bathroom looks like a second murder happened in there, same as with Debenham’s.”

“Yeah?” Clint makes a point to swallow this time before talking. “Mirror clean, everything else abattoir chic?”

She nods. “The Soldier knows how to escape detection. How to put on whatever persona is required to get in and out without a problem, at least temporarily.” She waves a hand to indicate the house itself. “He just doesn’t seem to care much about keeping a low profile during the time _in between_ getting in and getting out.”

Clint raises an eyebrow. He already knows this, but just to confirm: “And that’s new, right? Bloody stars aside, this Jackson Pollock stuff is new. Even accounting for hits where he was instructed to frame someone for a sloppy murder.”

“Very new. The Soldier does—did—long-distance kills mostly. Target was always a very clean hit. At least in the ‘precise’ sense.” 

Her eyes narrow. “But peripherals weren’t, necessarily. The people around the target, or in front of the target, like I was, or any incidental collateral nearby. He never cared much about precision or lethality with them—didn’t even take pains to kill _witnesses_ near as I could tell—as long as no one got too close a look at _him._ ”

“You were surprised that the dude who saw him climbing lived to complain about it. Take it that would have counted as getting a close look at him, then?”

“It would have. But that’s another he’s changed in his methods. Purposely making messes, purposely leaving people who’ve seen him, ensuring all his kills are up close and personal.” Natasha gestures toward the basement. “Making sure they last.”

“At least we have a solid list of reasons we think he’s off-leash and pulling a Ferris Bueller.”

“…True.”

Clint gives the box a shake to redistribute the cereal. “Anything missing when you were searching the second story? And did you find Callahan’s stomach?”

“Nothing obvious, and yes.” Natasha gestures for the box and reaches in for some cereal. She finishes swallowing before speaking. 

“Bedroom closet,” she says. “Nailed to the wall with a tent peg. That’s the only area of the room that’s disturbed at all beyond the blood trail he left as he walked.”

But no blood trail on the street outside that hotel, or any of the other crime scenes that really should leave a mark. Cap had been wondering about that. 

It makes sense here and with Debenham—guy cleaned up before heading out. But the hotel… How do you jump out a fifth floor window covered in enough blood to soak through a carpet and land without at least a splatter, let alone a few bloody bootprints?

Clint kind of doubts he’s bringing hospital shoe covers or drugstore shower caps with him on these hits, though the image of a man in blood-soaked leathers, metal and leather face mask and plastic booties is kind of a fun one.

“Well, that’s all we’ve got, then,” Clint says. “The police will take care of the rest, or STRIKE Kappa, or whoever. Long as it’s not us.” 

He tips the box up and finishes the golden crunchy nuggets of sugary joy. Real shame the killer didn’t think to eat this. Might have lightened his mood and left him a little less bloodthirsty than all this tofurkey nonsense. 

“Are we keeping his love note?”

Natasha pulls it out of a pocket and reads it to herself once again. Then she puts it back. “If the MPD snapped photos of it, then STRIKE knows what it says. If they didn’t, then no one’s missing what they don’t know about.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warning: Disembowelment of a target is discovered and described in some detail; maybe don’t read while eating.


	14. Natasha | Your man is a killer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title comes from “Double Crossing Man” by DeWolff.
> 
> Also~ You might have noticed this little link down at the bottom for a related work. Many thanks to Homikaze for starting a podfic of this story! Go check it out—it’s truly marvelous!

**—Washington D.C. | Saturday, 02 June 2012 | 4:30 p.m.—**

“Is that a fucking smiley face?!”

“ _Thank_ you,” Clint says with outstretched arms. “Finally, someone who agrees that that’s the weirdest part of this crime scene.” 

Interesting. Even willing to be in agreement with Stark—or to appear so, despite their conversation on the way back to the house. How things have changed since those two bonded over unconventional garden mulch. 

This is the time to let Stark and Rogers come to their own conclusions, independently, and see if that can get them any additional insights that might get overlooked if she and Clint led with their theory. Clint, true to his word, is not blowing their cover.

Rogers frowns at the words projected on the screen. “No punctuation,” he says. “No capital letters. Nothing that would require a second hand. Even the… the ‘smiley’ face—” and bless him, he uses little patriotic bunny ears when he says that “—is made out of things close enough to the Shift key to do one-handed.”

Stark shrugs. “Other hand was probably full of stomach ready to be tent-pegged to a closet wall. Or guts ready to be strung. Or he never went to grammar school. Does it matter?” 

He jabs a finger toward the screen. “That smiley face is what _matters_. That’s not something a super-secret super-assassin from the ‘40s is going to type unless he’s gotten some modern day experience.”

Well, he isn’t wrong. She’d been far less secret and more in the vein of spy-who-kills than killer-who-does-nothing-else, but she’d still been so steeped in Red Room brainwashing and Soviet-era nationalism that she’d have had a hard time recognizing an old-school smiley face for what it was.

The Soldier… How much more knowledgeable could he have possibly been when he first cut himself loose? If that’s what, in fact, has happened. The more dangerous the operative, the more closely handlers tended to keep them in the dark. The Soldier would have been kept in the darkest shadows of them all, no matter who held his leash.

And wouldn’t be typing smileys. 

“He’s been fully off-leash for at least a month now,” Rogers points out. “He could easily have picked it up looking at someone’s phone, either over their shoulder or because he stole it.”

Clint shakes his head. “No, Cap. These days, we use emojis.” Clint looks like he wants nothing more than to hear Captain America say “emojis.” Maybe someday he’ll get that wish. “They show up as actual little faces with expressions.”

Natasha smiles, half sure Rogers already knows this and that it’s part of his “aw shucks, I’m so out of time” ruse. But she’ll play along. 

“The smiley is old-fashioned,” she says. “Almost no one uses them—unless they’re working on a typewriter or something. Just like at this scene.”

“I’m not seeing how that disproves anything about modern day experience.” Rogers moves his hands in parallel along the table as he speaks. First to the left— “He’s been out on his own recognizance—” then to the right “—ergo he doesn’t behave like we’d expect. Either from a guy like me from before the War or from a guy like Nat’s Soldier.”

Natasha leans back in her seat, crossing one leg over the other. “The Soldier is definitely working alone, yes, and for the entire month. Possibly longer. And he likely doesn’t feel the need for a phone, smart or otherwise.” 

And she’s decided about the handlers, now that she’s had a chance to really think about it and to re-read the note he left. “He’s angry at his handlers,” she says. “That much we know for certain.” No doubts about it anymore. None of them could possibly doubt that’s what is happening. Keeping their minds open is one thing, denying the obvious is another.

“He’s leaving messages on purpose,” she adds, “whether that’s the state of the body, the owner of the body, or an actual message typed out. And he’s learning as he goes. Changing. Evolving his tactics.”

Stark narrows his eyes. “So we catch him before he gains another hundred XP and levels up.”

“What?”

Natasha shakes her head. “It’s a role-playing game, Rogers. You don’t have to understand that reference.”

“Maybe I _want_ to,” he mutters, enunciating perfectly despite the soft volume.

And that’s interesting, too. 

A super soldier from the ‘40s. Kept out of the loop and on a tight leash—or in Rogers’s case, on ice. Adapting to all things modern-day, _or at least wanting to._ The similarities do pile up.

Maybe they’re going about this wrong. Maybe instead of trying to anticipate a rebellious enforcer based on the trail he leaves and what she knows of the Soldier—or a rogue S.H.I.E.L.D. operative—they ought to be asking themselves “what would Captain America do?”

…Except Captain America probably wouldn’t use people as garden mulch, _even_ if those people were Nazis waging a war.

And if these really _are_ his handlers the Soldier is targeting… 

She meets Clint’s eyes and then blinks. It’s time. The other two have had time to ponder the note, and they need to ponder the greater implications as a team. It’s what she’s been trying to put a finger on this whole time, and it just rings truer and truer, for all it should be impossible with the layers of oversight within S.H.I.E.L.D. 

It’s a massive stretch that she doesn’t want to make, because if it’s true, then she’s in the wrong line of business, _again._ But stranger things have happened, and the truth is usually stretchier than regular people would like to admit.

“What if—” She cuts herself off and goes over the conjecture once more to make sure she’s ready to drop this theory into their mixture. Sets it out clearly in her mind. Clint seemed to think it was a worrying possibility, too, and she trusts his judgment. 

If they both independently came to the idea, each from their own direction… It’s solid, if still a stretch. 

“What if the Soldier was already with S.H.I.E.L.D.,” she says, “and _we’re_ the ones he’s turned on? Not Department X.”

Oh, it’s a stretch. Such a stretch, but… 

“Didn’t he shoot you?” Stark asks, index finger zipping back and forth with each pointed question. “Don’t you work for S.H.I.E.L.D.? Don’t those two facts sound a little weird side by side? Is it just me? Do they sound weird? I think they sound weird. Anyone?”

She shrugs. “Nick likes his compartmentalization.” 

Rogers’s eyebrows go up in the sort of surprised disapproval that somehow doesn’t include anything overly judgmental. “That’s some strictly sectioned out compartments, Nat.”

Clint nods, though. “It wouldn’t be the first time two S.H.I.E.L.D. teams were working toward opposite ends. Hell, what are we doing now but working at opposite ends with most of STRIKE? They want him to work—maybe _resume_ working?—for S.H.I.E.L.D., and we want him off the playing field entirely.”

“Clint and I are the whole of STRIKE Delta,” Natasha adds. Time to confirm just how compartmentalized the organization is. “We report only to Phil and Nick. We’ve worked at odds with other STRIKE teams before, cleaning up their messes before they had a chance to make them.”

It feels so weird to explain this, to lay it out in the open for outsiders to pick apart. But these aren’t outsiders any longer, and they should pick it apart. Her loyalties can’t be divided if she’s going to succeed in this hunt. S.H.I.E.L.D. secrets revealed, or this team betrayed by her silence. Not great options, but Nick wouldn’t have steered her to the Avengers if he didn’t anticipate this.

“Other times we worked alongside another STRIKE team, but with two parallel mission objectives. Theirs and ours. Not usually at cross purposes, but sometimes.”

Stark snaps his fingers. “ _That’s_ why there was so much tension over the scepter. You know, I always thought it was me? Because I’m not a team player? Wow, this changes everything.”

“I don’t see it changing anything,” Rogers says. “Because we’re still not talking about the scepter.”

“Such a dream-crusher. Maybe you should be Captain _Dad._ ” Stark shakes his head. “If we had the scepter, we’d have team science, me and Bruce, working together and helping us find our toy Soldier. We could use the scepter to pique my science bro’s interest and—”

“We don’t _have_ the scepter,” Clint says, teeth gritted. “We don’t _want_ the scepter. We’re not _after_ the scepter.”

“Right, right.” Stark looks momentarily worried with a touch of self-recrimination. Given the eyebrows Rogers is making in his direction, there’s been some team-mom talk about getting along somewhere in the last couple of days. 

And the puppet talk did stop almost as soon as it started, so there is apparently a third person in this world with the ability to change Stark’s behavior, after Rhodey and Pepper. Good to know. This team is turning out to be uncannily dynamic. People changing across the board.

First Clint and Stark getting along for a whole day, including donuts up in a billboard. Then Rogers and Stark working together on the data without blowing up this cute little house. Maybe she should watch out. She might end up getting along with Stark, herself, if she’s not careful.

Ha. Stranger things have happened.

“So, leaving the scepter aside,” Rogers says, “let’s unpack this bit about the possibility that our murderer is an ex-Soviet assassin working for S.H.I.E.L.D., and Natasha—an ex-Soviet assassin working for S.H.I.E.L.D.—wouldn’t know about him.” 

He shakes his head. “It’s not that I don’t buy it. Fury had us up on that helicarrier looking for Loki and the Tesseract while hauling around what looked an awful lot like HYDRA weapons from my time powered by that same Tesseract. I wouldn’t say he cared too much about keeping up appearances and keeping people informed.”

Rogers drums his fingers once on the tabletop, a rare display from him so far. She wonders whether it’s the weapons themselves or their resemblence to what he’s already fought and defeated that is setting him off. Or the Tesseract. Or something about his time that’s lost to him. He _is_ pretty fresh out of the ice.

“But that’s not the kind of compartmentalization that gets one key operative shot near-fatally by another,” he says. “Fury doesn’t strike me as that brand of reckless.”

“‘Carry a Tesseract-powered arsenal across the planet in a giant airship with lackluster propulsion and a massive rage monster in disguise,’” Tony says, “that sounds fine to you, but not ‘forget to mention that there’s an ally in the way to avoid friendly fire?’ Really? That’s where you draw the line?”

“As I recall, you tried to poke that massive rage monster out of his disguise, so you’re not one to talk about what counts as too reckless. But yes,” Rogers continues before he’s cut off and derailed. “That’s where I’d draw the line for Fury. He looks after his personnel, but is less cautious with his weaponry.”

And sure, that could be the case. The Tesseract arsenal could go wrong, but is likely to go exactly to plan. But setting one agent to gun down another agent’s mark without briefing either agent… Not Nick. Unless the Soldier is considered weaponry and not personnel… 

Or if the timing is off. If the Soldier is with—was with S.H.I.E.L.D., when did that trade happen? It could have been after Odessa. 

“The point,” Natasha says, “is less ‘would Nick be reckless like that’ and more that there are multiple players within S.H.I.E.L.D., and sometimes they don’t talk it through.”

She gestures toward Clint, who’s shrunk in on himself somewhat with the helicarrier talk. “Like I said, we answered to Phil and Nick. We never reported to Jasper Sitwell, for example. And some of the other STRIKE teams never reported to Phil, but did report to Sitwell. STRIKE Alpha, for one.”

Clint stirs in his chair. “Kappa, Upsilon and Omega for a few more,” he adds. “Sometimes they report to Fury, sometimes to Sitwell. Once or twice to Pierce, even, for STRIKE Alpha.”

Rogers nods as he goes over the information. “Okay. So if the Soldier was S.H.I.E.L.D., it’s possible he was reporting to someone else and you never crossed paths. It would help explain why he’s targeting so many S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives, and why they aren’t lining up as a pattern within S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“And why STRIKE is holding back information,” Clint says.

“Agreed.” Rogers frowns. “But it doesn’t answer the question of why _Director_ Fury himself isn’t aware that the organization he directs employs an enhanced Soviet operative with a metal arm that can punch open safes and slice his co-leader apart. And I didn’t get the sense that he was lying about being in the dark about this Winter Soldier.”

Natasha shakes her head. “He wasn’t. I know his tells.” 

No, Nick had been distressed enough to come see them in person. Had been adamant about bringing them into the loop—his own team, hand-picked and battle-tested and not connected to Pierce or the rest of STRIKE—despite there already being STRIKE teams on the job.

Nick likes to keep things split up, but if he doesn’t know about an operative in S.H.I.E.L.D., that operative is probably not in S.H.I.E.L.D. It’s one of the reasons the theory is tenuous even as it’s so appealing. Why it doesn’t fit perfectly despite fitting so very many of their facts. Why it’s not so simple as it seems on the surface.

“Is it possible Secretary Pierce was the only person the Soldier reported to?” Rogers looks between her and Clint. “If there’s a STRIKE team of two, could there have been a team of one?”

She considers it. On the one hand, most STRIKE teams were some twenty-five to thirty strong, and simply rotated who was active at any give time. She and Clint were an anomaly directly resulting from the fact that so few other S.H.I.E.L.D. agents trusted her when she first joined up.

On the other hand, there’s nothing saying a single operative couldn’t be considered a part of STRIKE… or that any given operative didn’t report to one of the two leaders of S.H.I.E.L.D. and not the other. It’s just that in every instance she can think of like that—operatives like Carter and Knight—Nick has been who that agent reports to. Not Pierce.

“It’s unlikely,” she finally says. 

Clint nods his agreement. “We’re only STRIKE Delta because an entire STRIKE crew got wiped out raiding a terrorist stronghold in Juneau a few years back, both the actives and the inactives they called in for backup, and they replaced the team with just Nat and me.”

“A single operative is just a single operative,” she adds. “And would report to Sitwell, Phil, or Nick. I’ve never heard of an agent who reported only to Pierce. Nick would be in the loop.”

Rogers makes a thoughtful noise in his throat. “It’s still worth considering. The more angles we look at this from, the bigger our chances of seeing it from the right one. And people who _should_ be in the loop are not always in that loop.”

“I’ll start up another whiteboard spiderweb,” Stark says. “I’m thinking green for jealousy. The ‘they want him back, but we want him worse’ option. With a side of ‘how deep does it run,’ if Fury is in the dark.”

“Right.” Rogers leans back in his chair. “We want the same thing as STRIKE but for different ends. They’re rivals, but have to bring us in to keep up appearances since they keep _striking_ out.”

Stark reaches across the table with his fist, and Rogers actually bumps it. 

Maybe it was a mistake to leave those two together all day.

* * *

“You’ve got to wonder why S.H.I.E.L.D., and not some other organization out there,” Stark says later that evening around a mouthful of dark fudge sundae supreme ice cream.

“I do?” Clint asks.

Stark gestures with his spoon. “Well. Red Room and Department X are old Soviet holdovers. S.H.I.E.L.D. is straight up Cold War-era American paramilitary. If that’s not oil and water…”

Natasha shakes her head and swallows her bite of strawberry ripple. “Department X could infiltrate anything and everything. It was what the Red Room specialized in. If they thought they were planting a mole when they traded the—”

She stops.

That might be it, too. If they thought they were putting a sleeper agent in S.H.I.E.L.D., then maybe they _were_ putting a sleeper agent in S.H.I.E.L.D., and maybe they activated him when the Chitauri attacked. See an enemy struggling, plant a boot in that enemy’s backside while their guard is down.

The Soldier could be both. Could be a S.H.I.E.L.D. operative _and_ a Department X sleeper agent, just waking up.

“Ah, in the immortal words of Madonna, ‘deeper and deeper,’” Stark says, seeming to catch her drift. And why not? He _is_ a genius, as he so very much loves to announce. 

The prospect of a Soviet sleeper agent being pulled up decades after the Soviet Union collapsed is less than pleasant. What other goal would such an agent have but to destroy everything they touched? Unless the current powers that be had managed to keep their sleeper just awake enough to evolve with the times.

Stark digs out another spoonful. “You know, I like this. It’s not sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll. But spies, thugs and killing machines still has a nice ring to it. We could start a band.”

“Long as we’re not rehearsing before the sun’s up,” Clint mutters. He squirts another generous splorch of chocolate sauce on his butter pecan. “When I get horribly ass-murdered in my basement, I want my neighbors to feel sorry for me.”

Stark looks about to either correct him or one up the play on words, but then grins instead. “Nice one.” 

They clink spoons, and Natasha holds out her own spoon for a third clink, not wanting to be left out of this bizarre budding friendliness. Who’d have thought she and Clint would end up sitting around a dining room table with Tony Stark, clinking spoons of ice cream over gross and grossly inappropriate jokes?

When Rogers gets back from his evening run—because a morning run is simply not enough—Stark gestures toward the freezer. “Spangles, you’re late. Join the group.”

Rogers wipes his face with the towel he left by the door and walks through the living room to join them. “Ice cream social? Nice.” He heads into the kitchen.

“Got you old-fashioned vanilla— Seemed like your type,” Stark calls over his shoulder. “It was that or red white and blueberry, and that was a little on the nose.”

Rogers pulls out a chair and sits, opening up his vanilla with a smile. “What if I’m more a rocky road type?” 

She could swear his eyes twinkle in the overhead lighting as he eats a big bite of ice cream. A little mischievous gleam that she’s certain no one in the general public has been privy to since the ice, if not earlier. 

“Is that you coming out?” Stark asks. “Did you just come out to us? Over ice cream? In my house?”

Rogers digs out a spoonful. “As usual, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m sure there are a lot of pints of rocky road out there that are real flattered to hear your ice cream preferences, Cap.” Clint offers the chocolate syrup, and Rogers obligingly holds his pint of ice cream out for Clint to squirt some into the crater left by his first spoonful.

“Did we hear anything more on our killer?” Rogers asks between bites. “Or any new victims? Anything from Fury or Hill?”

“No, no, and no, but we’re still on call tonight if they find anything,” Natasha answers.

“And we’ve been thinking what if the Soldier is a Soviet sleeper and that’s why he was working with S.H.I.E.L.D. before he started killing S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel.”

Rogers nods. “Can’t imagine any topic of discussion more appropriate for an ice cream social.”

“Sir,” comes JARVIS’s voice from the television set in the living room. “Maria Hill is on the line.”

“Speaking of being on call,” Natasha says.

“Patch her through,” Stark says as he puts his phone in the center of the table.

It’ll be something when he gets the time to wire this little house for holographic calls and all the rest. He’s already got the television set up. How long until the fridge suggests breakfast options when she opens it in the mornings?

Hill is less terse this time, but still serious. “Evening. We’ve got a relatively clean pair this time around, if you ignore the hash marks carved in their backs and the stars on their faces.”

Clint leans forward. “Pair? Two in one spot?”

“That’s new, right?” Stark asks. “Two-for-one deal. That’s new, except the four-for-one a few days back. But those were gang-related and shooting at him, so— Hey did these two have guns?”

Natasha can imagine Hill’s deeply unimpressed face on the other line. It’s probably a good thing Stark doesn’t have the full holo setup. 

“Siblings, no guns.” There’s a pause, like she’s giving him a chance to head off to the verbal races again. “Bodies found side-by-side in a bathtub with seven inches of lye.”

Clint grimaces, but his stomach clearly isn’t turned enough to stop eating. 

Stark whistles. “Not gonna _lie_ , that’s some pretty harsh housecleaning.”

Hill’s sigh on the other end of the line is audible. “I called Romanoff,” she mutters under her breath. “ _Romanoff._ ”

Rogers clears his throat. “Doesn’t sound like our guy, though.” He pushes his ice cream to the side. “What makes us sure they aren’t copycat killings? All the others have been torn apart or at least sliced all the way open.”

“All we’ve given the press is that there are stars carved in the bodies and slash marks. None of the copycats has been as brutal as this Winter Soldier.” Hill pauses again, this time clearly for effect. 

“These two,” she continues, “have stars carved into their faces, with points at the temples, forehead and corners of their mouths. Nature of the lines and bruising along the neck indicates they were alive and screaming when the cuts were made.”

“And then dumped in the tub?” Clint asks. “Why? That’s over way too quick for the M.O.”

“Based on the splash patterns,” Hill says, “forensics says they were _drowned_ in the lye, one by one.”

Tony grimaces. “Yeeeesh. Drowned in it? Not left to soak in a tub with lye afterward?” 

Hill pauses, and there’s a rustle of notes she must have taken when getting the call herself. “Held down in the lye by the back of the neck while they struggled and aspirated the lye. There are chemical burns all around their faces and arms.”

Rogers breaks the silence that follows. “Well, on that note,” he says as he gets to his feet. “Guess it’s time to clean up and head out to see a crime scene.”

“Go for a shower, not a bath,” Stark calls after him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warning: Dry description of murder conducted via bathtubs and lye. Shouldn’t be an issue, but just in case.


	15. Interlude | The risk of combating monsters (is the risk of becoming monsters)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title comes from [“When the Lambs Became the Wolves”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrG-TqC1E-U) by Voltaire.

**—Washington D.C. | Sunday, 03 June 2012 | 1:45 a.m.—**

It creeps along the rafters in the building, all brick and metal with the light fixtures hanging from the roof even farther above than these steel beams—left unfinished like a warehouse, like the gutted hive building that holds the den and the nest. But this building is gutted and open on purpose, just because they like the look of it.

They have not abandoned this empty building, but filled it with light and noise and people. People so easily ignored so far down below, except for the one it has come for.

There. There at the long narrow table is the mission control agent with the flushed cheeks, still saying pointless things to another man while he drinks his alcohol, still eating his tiny knots of crunchy brown cracker-bread, still laughing and laughing and chewing and laughing. 

He will not be laughing for much longer. 

Eventually— _drink up, asshole, drink up, take what we give you_ —he will have too much liquid inside him. 

Sloshing of liquid in the insides, but not for long. Soon the insides will be outside and no liquid will stay where it’s put. 

Eventually, he will have so much liquid in him that he will stumble in one direction or another. 

Stumble to the door to be killed in an alley. Nice dark alley, with one soaring street light already blinded when it arrived and the other blinded more recently by a well-thrown brick. It has thrown well, has waited well, has done so well, and will continue to do well. It will earn the reward.

Stumble to the bathroom to be killed on a toilet. Just another part of the gutted hive building with its people and its lights and its noise. Easily accessible from the rafters, and from there, only a single well-aimed leap away. It has excellent aim. It has explored all of these rafters, even the ones that do not connect. It will earn the reward.

Alley or bathroom. This is the target’s choice to make. Drink up. Asshole.

So many people below it on the open floor of the building. The most crowded kill zone yet, all thrashing against each other in time to the noise and the bright lights that strobe and flash and the thudding vibrations that will mask the noise of what is about to happen in the alley or in the bathroom.

Which will he choose? Oh, the options. Either way, drink up.

In the end, the mission control agent chooses the bathroom, just a quick climb over a dividing wall in the rafters, through the crawl space, to an open area above the stalls with their toilets, the urinals with their pink cakes and sticky floors— _lick it up, or you get no reward_ —the sinks with their leaking water drip-dripping against the drains. 

The target is in third stall from the entrance, against the far wall. The largest stall, with a metal bar screwed into the wall. Excellent. It can take its time. There is so much to do.

It waits until the mission control agent undoes his belt, pulls the dick out of the pants—now—and drops from the rafter above with curved fang in hand.

Blade to throat, to vocal cords, careful, careful, minimum bleeding, minimum damage, _maximum_ silencing. He will not bleed out. Bleeding out is too fast for this one. 

The other two made it fast for the asset spluttering in the water, the bleach, the ammonia, the chemical tang of the trough… They made it fast, and so they got fast deaths _from_ the asset, over so fast. Just a little splashing until they choke, breathe in the fumes and the lye.

This one, though… This one will suffer.

The target knows what has happened almost before it has finished happening. Knows what has landed on his back. Knows that this is the end for him but still tries to knock it away, tries to bang on the walls of the stall he has so conveniently locked himself into.

Bang. Bang.

Futility.

The noises from the other room, the big open space, the throbbing and pulsing of the giant boxes making all that noise and the screaming from the people trying to be heard over that noise… the mission control agent can bang as loud as he likes. Nothing will save him.

It has the target, is on the target, is carving, tearing, ripping through thin-shiny fabric and into skin and muscle—the fang licks from left hip to nape of neck, from neck to right hip—there goes thin-shiny fabric, so flimsy to start with, onto the tiles—from hip to shoulder blade, across to other shoulder blade, back to left hip. 

Neat. Tidy.

The blood star is the last neat and tidy thing that will happen to the mission control agent with the flushed cheeks.

 _Drink up, shithead. Won’t drink the beer, will it? Let’s see how it likes it from the other end._ Pain and tearing and pushing and slice-slicing of broken glass. _Should’ve been grateful. Should’ve taken what you were given the first time around. Learning_ that _lesson, aren’t you, you piece of shit?_

Knuckles rap against the stall door. Irritating interruption. “Hey, Kenny! You gonna let me in or what, man?”

The mission control agent struggles, kicks against the toilet, a scuffle of shoes on tile, of pants and belt buckle. The asset has traction, balance, practice; can keep its footing in any circumstance. 

The mission control agent does not; cannot.

He makes choking, grunting noises, gasping noises—the only ones available without vocal cords; it knows that fully well—as he slips on the tile, trying to catch himself on the metal bar. The noises are wrong and familiar and wrong and wrong and _wrong._ An unexpected nightmare in the killing process—

“Man, fuck you! You couldn’t wait five minutes for me to finish my drink before finding someone else to fuck?”

—but the nightmare will be useful. Will drive away the interruption. 

Fist against stall door. 

Fight the rising panic. 

It is _not_ the one making those noises. It has not made those noises in so long. When did it make those noises? Where? Somewhere very cold, somewhere always cold, somewhere bitterly cold and full of rock and snow. 

Before they finished silencing it.

More insults from the man outside the stall as he is snubbed, ignored. More thrashing and choking from the man inside the stall as he is held against his attacker—close close close—his bleeding back and tattered fabric remnants pressed to leather buckles, its killing face pressed to bleeding neck, metal arm angled across chest. 

Insults from outside the stall, thrashing and choking from inside the stall, but no more wretched memories for the asset. The time for remembering is over. This is the time for getting rid of the audience. 

Instinct says open the door. Instinct says kill the bystander quickly, however is necessary.

It is more than instinct.

It shifts a foot between the struggling target’s legs so that the target’s buckle clinks again on the floor, hits the flesh hand against the target’s outer thigh; it knows the necessary rhythm. It knows the sounds and the sounds and the pain and the sounds of pushing into things. Of pushing into assets.

The other man goes away with a curse.

The bathroom door closes.

Now to take its time. It can always distract again when another comes in with his dick out to take a piss.

Spin the target away—do not touch if it can be avoided, and now it _can_ be avoided—and onto the toilet he was so recently pissing into. _Drink up._ The mission control with the flushed cheeks is pale now, eyes wide with fear and pain, with desperation, with pleading. Hands on neck, to keep himself from dying. 

As though it is so careless, so unskilled, to let a blade end a life too quickly.

Insulting. 

Now that there is no one to save him, the mission control looks to the asset to save him. To pass him over, to move on, to decide it has done enough. 

Ha. Ha. It would laugh if it could. That is the sound of laughter. Ha. Ha. 

But it does not make those sounds. Does not make _any_ sounds, now. Not for some time. Not since the place where it was always cold.

It is utterly silent as it rips the mission control’s belt from the loops, binds the mission control’s wrists to the metal bar, unsheathes the longest of its talons. Gets to work. 

The mission control agent is supposed to be in this stall pushing into someone, the man he was talking to, perhaps, who has now been saved from that fate. But it is not the time for pushing into any people, no matter who the mission control agent thought was going to come to him here. 

The mechanic had thought it was turnabout, was fair play. And maybe sometimes… 

It carves the first of the seventeen lines into the mission control agent’s left buttock. If a thing is to happen once, it must happen seventeen times. Always seventeen. The five lines, the five lines, the five lines, and the two.

Maybe sometimes it _is_ turnabout.

It flips the blade around and slides it into the mission control agent to the sound of a grunting scream, more a cough than a cry, but voiceless agony all the same. _Learning that lesson, aren’t you, you piece of shit._

Yes, sometimes it _is_ fair play.

* * *

The crawl space for accessing one of the abandoned hive building’s three long-dead elevator shafts gives out onto the roof, where the first rays of sunlight are already warming the grit and gravel, the brickwork, the looming metal HVAC units with their segmented vents, so like the metal arm.

It surveys the upper nest, the very top of the head peeking over the lip of the crawl space and the rest of it hidden safely below the rooftop, ready to drop at a moment’s notice that something is amiss. 

Nothing is amiss.

It pulls itself up the last few feet, slithers over the edge, and lies back on the grit to watch the sky continue to lighten for several moments. Acclimate the eyes. Acclimate the lungs. Stretch out the spine and the limbs. The brightness and freshness and freedom of the fresh morning air.

Then it can crawl on the elbows under the traps and settle into the secondary nest built up against the a stone corner, the rooftop den that is far less safe—confinement is safety—but still home to many little creatures that have come to depend on it for rewards.

Little creatures that do not enjoy confinement, that live to be free and own the sky itself. All of its little pigeons, and the hawks that earn their own rewards if the pigeons aren’t careful. That is life. Little creatures earning their rewards however they can, sometimes at the expense of others.

It would bring the hawks a reward if it knew they would be here to partake. They are far less predictable than the pigeons, though. Less dependent on it. Free and self-sufficient. They are like it, earning their own rewards but not evil for the harm done to others. 

Still not as innocent as the pigeons, though, or the little creatures down below. These little ones should not earn their rewards. Should not have to, _do_ not have to, not with it to provide for them. 

And what a reward it has brought for the pigeons.

It reaches into a pouch and pulls out one of handfuls of birdseed it has stashed in the tac gear from the larger reward down below. It cannot give the entire reward to the little creatures on the roof. That is too much, and they will be sluggish and unable to evade the hawks.

But it can give them a handful at dawn, and another if there are many of them still visiting the rooftop nest later.

They are waiting, as usual, and are only as patient as they need to be before they can descend on the reward and pick out their favorite morsels. It did so well last night. Three targets, four kills, so many rewards.

Rewards for the little creatures in the primary nest down below with the piled fabrics and the duffel with all of the razor-edged teeth and claws. Rewards for the little creatures here in the rooftop nest with the downy soft pillow as long as the body is tall, with the white velvet covering and the letter-symbols in gold thread. 

It is careful to scatter the reward away from the smaller nests of twigs and twine and bits of the fluffy white pillow, cradling precious oblong spheres. There are three new spheres this morning, and it will not risk them to the frenzy of feathers and scrabbling beaks and feet.

Such a fine reward for the pigeons from meeting the mission objectives. And rewards for it as well. The food rewards already eaten, the sour-tangy cream studded with bright gemstone fruit nuggets, the sea-smelling crescents with the scraggly fronds on the underside and the crunchy outer shell hiding the tender-soft insides bursting with brine… 

And not just the food rewards, but the other… the data… 

It reaches into a pocket in the tac gear and pulls out the slender drive with the embossed logo, the S.H.I.E.L.D. emblem, the sigil of black wings on gray drive shell, the sign of evil, or one of them. The truer sign with its red and black limbs upon limbs, that is the secret sign. This other is the sign they show the world.

The sign of data. 

It leans back into the pillowed corner of the roof, turns the drive over in the flesh hand, letting the tiny stick of raw data twirl between the fingers like a knife or a shuriken. 

A coin with part of the circumference polished to a deadly razor-sharp edge. Harmless, so harmless, just a street performer with a bit of slight of hand, just a shiny coin, until only the right person is left observing, clapping, and then collapsing in a bloody puddle.

The drive is harmless, too, if left unused. If put with the other one below, tucked away at the edge of this building it has made the nests in. Not at the heart, not in the primary nest itself. Never that. The nest is for things that are precious, where it can care for and protect and provide for the precious little creatures. 

The drives are not precious. Valuable, yes. Useful, yes. Harmful, yes, if put to use, taken to a computer, read. All those addresses. All the faces. 

But that is for the future. It already has targets lined up. Targets, pustules of evil on the landscape, pockets of blight in the city below, that will last it for months. There is no need to form a roster of lesser-known evils. No need to look for more evil than the bounty laid out before it.

It will put the drive with the other when it goes back down. In the hollow wall where the building itself will come down when its usefulness has passed.

All these buildings. All with their weaknesses, just like a human being. _The condition of these old buildings,_ a handler said once. In the cold place with the rock and ice. _They’ll topple in an instant if you break them here, and here, and here._

_Always look for these places, Soldier. Always weaken these spots._

…Soldier… 

Not asset. Not shithead. Not you filthy idiot. Not you disgusting piece of shit.

_They’ll topple in an instant if you break them here, and here, and here. Then wait and strike._

Yes. And then down it comes with a few adjustments. Just a shove here, a knock there. A well-placed blow and even the strongest concrete structure will fatally shift on itself.

And so with a human body. Where to break them so they topple, even if they survive long enough afterward to thrash and struggle and slowly succumb to lye in the the eyes, the ears, the nose. Lye in the mouth and down the throat. Into the lungs.

If they did not want to splutter and struggle in lye when the tables finally turned, they should not have kept lye in their home, waiting to be used. Lye is so harmless when it is not used. So harmful when it is.

It is not wise to keep harmful things in the home. They should know better. 

It knows better. The drive will not enter the nest, will not be there to compromise the little creatures and their innocence with its locked up data.

The nest deep below will be safe, no matter what. The nest with the mother rat and her rat babies, and with all the supports left stable and strong. Even if the building must fall, the nest will be a pocket of protection for the rat family and all of the little creatures.

It slips the drive into the pocket again and brings out a second handful of the birdseed, scattering it where only scraps of the first remain. 

The pigeons, with their fluffy iridescence and perpetual bobbing squabble and stalk, continue to flutter and prance, reveling in the reward just as it would revel in the bodies of its targets if there were not the need to retreat and avoid detection. 

The mission is the most important thing, but it is not well understood. The innocents do not know they are being saved, think they are next, think that it will harm them. So there can be no celebration on the scene, nothing beyond the message itself. 

And the reward. There is always time left for a reward, because it plans for that. No more doing well and no reward. No more handlers-operators-trainers-technicians. No one is here to take the rewards away or to insist that the job was not well done after all.

This time, so many rewards. This time, the birdseed. This time, the greasy yellow sponge logs with the soft white paste inside. This time, the tiny curls of noodle with the bright orange gravy-sauce all over and through them. This time, the sausage with the specks of cheese. 

This time, a second drive with the data, the names and addresses, the targets-to-be. In the pants pocket, with only a little blood on it from the bowels of the mission control agent with the flushed cheeks.

But that does not matter. That is over. What matters is what it will do tonight, what it will do before night _falls_ , what it will do to the next targets on the list. Two of them, again. Yes. It can afford to be ambitious again now that it has succeeded two nights in a row.

Sunday. The targets will both be in their homes, so “safe” in their nests. So cozy. Living free and happy despite what they are and what they have done and how they have lived. 

The researcher, yes. It is time again to try, to succeed, not to fail. It does not fail. To fail once is unheard of. To fail twice is unspeakable. A third time… 

It shakes the head, grits the teeth until the jaw hurts and the head throbs. Clenches the hands, the screech of metal on metal sending the little creatures scattering, the slice of nails into palm gathering up the thoughts once more. Order in pain.

It will not fail.

Sunday. The pattern. The researcher will remain home the entire day, take phone calls, be lonely. He will deal with the misery of being useless to the rest of them, unnecessary, tired and retired. Still uncontacted by code, by sign, by message, by signal. 

Alone.

But the researcher will not be alone tonight. He will be joined by an asset and then he will join another target, the expert who speaks the words. The dangerous target. Yes. It is ambitious, these two targets. But necessary. It will not allow the researcher to plague the night-thoughts and wake it in a sweat again, and the other… 

Dangerous prey, but more dangerous to leave unhunted.

And it struck three targets this past night. Struck hard and fast, made the quick kills and the slow one. The clean kills and the one that gushed all over the bathroom and out of the stall. The convenience kills and the one that had to be next. 

Oh, and it went well. Very, very well. It did _so_ well and— 

The rewards for it. So much better than the mechanic could offer.

The prep handlers with their hoses and their troughs and their chemicals that burn and burn in the hash marks, that burn and burn in the eyes and mouth and nose, that burn and burn and _burn._

So clean, so tidy, so quick but so painful. They were quick and made things painful, so it was quick and made things painful. The beauty and the symmetry, the justice and retribution, the cleaning of evil from them inside and out, the long soak to leach out any last perverse drops.

Perfect.

As perfect as the mission control agent with his lesson learned, his turnabout, his fair play. Cutting and slicing, out it all comes, the blood, the tatters of intestine, the flecks of shit. Fitting, so fitting.

And the man behind the bar. The unexpected evil in the alley of brickwork and crates, trying to take the woman back, the woman with the sweeping braids.

_No going back—_

But it was there. 

_—Never going back._

She did not want to go back—never—and the man could not make her go back, not when it was there to stop him. What is one more kill in a night so busy already? 

The woman not calling for emergency services, but crying and mashing at her phone. Not like the other in the motel with the child and the man who spilled his evil out into the carpet. No stay on the line ma’am, no help is on the way ma’am, no please stay calm, ma’am.

She mashed at the phone and mashed some more, and cried while it pulled out the all of the man’s insides into a neat pile, and then a twinkling sound from the phone and the red and blue lights, the sirens, the time to leave.

But it had watched from the roof, safely out of sight, until another woman in a white top so bright against her skin came out of the bar and collected her.

Not to take her back, but to take her inside, home, possibly. 

Just as it took itself home, after stopping to collect more rewards for the little creatures it looks after. The little rats that like to run skitter-scatter up and down the arms and legs, chasing each other and squeaking brightly with their noses and whiskers a-twitch. The others, so many of them in all their shapes and sizes and numbers of legs.

And the mother rat, as angry and defensive as ever. Her fuzzy-squirmy rat babies, with their newly opened eyes.

So many tiny lives it cares for now, even as it snuffs out the evils that inhabit this city. The evils that cannot be allowed to do again what they have already done, cannot be allowed to prey on others and continue spreading their harm.

The evils like the talker, the one with the words.

The operator’s special word had no effect. But there are more words, many more, and many who can speak them. The talker knows the words and speaks them well and smoothly. No accent. No hesitation.

But it has gone so long without hearing the words… Before, it had gone so long without hearing the operator’s special word, and when the operator said the word, nothing happened. Maybe… Maybe it has been enough time since it heard the other words, whatever they are, whichever sounds they make. 

Maybe they will do nothing.

The sun is fully overhead when the decision is made. Yes. The second target will be first, and will be the expert with the words. It is safe enough to hunt that one if it strikes fast, if it attacks the expert’s throat first and silences him, as it did last night with the mission control agent.

More effective, more quick, than the plastic tube with the bulb at the end that allowed the feeder with the red mouth to live and breathe while so much of her evil was cut apart and spilled out. Cleaning inside and out. So necessary and so fitting. And to feed her little creatures with her body. Yes. Feeder to the end. Feeder beyond the end.

The expert today. And then the researcher tonight.

It should stay away. Should avoid the researcher since they know it is targeting that one. But the researcher… it is so tired of sleeplessness waiting for the researcher to invade the night and wake it up in fear.

It is time for the researcher, and such a target… A success there, a good job with that one… Such a reward for all the little creatures to share in.

The expert with the words. Then the researcher. Finally. Finally, the researcher.

A busy day, and then a busy night. And then, finally, to sleep again, soundly and well, so deserved. A reward all by itself, to curl up with the soft things and the little creatures, to close the eyes and relax the muscles, to sleep so that the researcher cannot wake it again in a cold sweat.

And the sun, already so high. Time to take a chance, time to risk the daylight again.

Time to prepare for the hunt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warning: Semi-graphic reference to memories of an off-the-page HYDRA Trash Party incident involving a broken beer bottle being put where it did not belong. Imitation of sexy sound effects in very unsexy and violent ways. Death by knife-fucking. Yeah. Also, implications of impending non-con in an alley, prevented.


	16. Clint | And he's out tonight (And he's watchin' you)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from [“He's Back (The Man Behind the Mask)”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xz-y3SJyEVA) by Alice Cooper.

**—Washington D.C. | Sunday, 03 June 2012 | 7:45 a.m.—**

Across the table from him, Stark groans over his plate of as-yet untouched pancakes. “I thought we already did last night’s hit. Raiders of the Lost Arc. Rub a dub dub, two in the tub. Seventeen hash marks. Lye. Melty faces.”

Natasha spreads more jam on the fresh pancake Cap sets on her plate. “Thanks,” she chirps at him before looking at Stark. “He’s done multiple hits in one night before. It would be easy for him. Convenient, even, since he got two in each spot.”

“It’s not convenient for me,” Stark complains. “Or my stomach.”

Clint stuffs another forkful of fluffy awesome into his mouth. Stark can complain about his tummy all morning, but nothing’s phasing _him_. As long as Cap makes these, he will keep eating them. Until every scrap is gone. 

Who knew Captain Mom made pancakes? This is the best discovery since the one where Stark makes travel mugs.

He swallows. “Let’s focus on the S.H.I.E.L.D. guy, since he was first and probably the actual, planned-ahead target.” He looks down at the phone in the middle of the table. “What do you mean when you say he was stabbed in the butt seventeen times?” 

Because sure, he’s going to keep eating pancakes, but _some_ good morning information does need clarification. And that’s a third instance of seventeen in three hits. Boom, boom, boom. Gotta mean something. The “civilian out back” was probably just a bonus for their guy. But Olsen… 

Hell, he knew Olsen. Didn’t _like_ him, but you don’t have to like the dispatch crew.

Hill’s voice over the phone is dry. “I mean what I said, Barton. He was stabbed in the butt. Seventeen times.” 

“Are we talking, stabbed _in_ the butt—” Stark makes a horizontal stabbing motion with his fork “—or stabbed, er, _up_ the butt?” He makes a very different stabbing motion. “Those seem like _very_ different things.”

Clint nods. “Crime of passion versus pantsless crime of passion.”

Stark points at him. “Yes. That _exact_ kind of different thing. Should we be looking at a more sexual nature to these killings? The janitor with the broom up his butt and out his ribcage. Was that Vlad the Impaler or—” his eyebrows waggle “—Vlad the _Impaler?_ ”

“And total gastric bypass,” Clint adds. “Was that about failure, starvation and earning dinner, or was that about fisting, literally?”

Stark looks at Rogers. “Fisting is where—”

“I know.”

“Really? _You?_ ”

Rogers presses on ahead, even while pouring more batter on the griddle. “The important question given this new information is whether the Soldier, while operating as a vigilante, is also a sexual predator turning that on his targets.” He pauses. “Which I have to say it seems incredibly unlikely given the _survivor_ profiles.” 

Clint’s got to agree with Cap there. His money is on the Soldier not having much interest in that area, at least not in that way. Rapists got their jollies from power, sure, but the Soldier has his own way of expressing power—a far bloodier, always-fatal way. 

“What seems more likely,” Rogers says with a wave of the spatula, “is that he is specifically targeting sexual predators and using their own tactics against them. Whether that be predators in S.H.I.E.L.D. who have had their records doctored or predators out on the streets he catches in the act.”

“Or political sorts,” Natasha says. “Nothing sexual about Waldroup and that lot, but they might fit the predator bill.” She brings up a list of targets on her tablet. “Even Pierce had injuries that track with the latter theory, if we assume he had a darker side kept off the record to fit with our ‘going after bastards’ theory. And there have been rapists and would-be rapists in the civilian kills.”

“Turkey baster might fit.” Stark looks longingly at his pancakes. “You know. If we treat that as one hell of a deepthroat encounter.”

Clint can see it, but he’s not sure he _likes_ this new flavor to the vigilante justice theory. They have several theories and haven’t really excluded any of them except the vampire theory, but this particular one… well, it makes _his_ job pretty hard, is all. 

It’s easy enough to see a guy killing people like out of a horror flick and want to stop him, even if the victims are jerks. It’s way, way _harder_ to see a guy killing rapists, specifically, and still want to stop him. And not maybe consider joining up with him instead.

Especially if these deaths are mimicking the crimes being punished in any way. Because the nature of the deaths… there are some crimes that just… Well, he doesn’t have an alternate alias lurking in the back of his closet for nothing. Sometimes gravesite time is better than jail time, especially if the jail time won’t stick the way, say, an arrow to the throat would.

“We do have a witness of a sort this time, at least for the last one,” Hill says, and then proceeds to read his mind in a way that isn’t creepy or disturbing in the slightest: “And she fits your theory about vigilante justice mimicking the crimes being punished.”

She’s just on the same wavelength. She knows about the Ronin mantle and is on the same wavelength. That’s all. She’s not in his head. She isn’t. She doesn’t have a scepter. No one has a scepter except the alien godling who knows how to use it and is freely frolicking through the universe.

Yep, yep, yep. All is well. _All_ is well.

Natasha raises an eyebrow and thankfully pulls him from his thoughts. “The second victim at the bar involved a witness?” She shakes her head wonder. “Like the hit on Goldman in the motel with the civilian hit in that same motel, leaving two witnesses. He’s sticking to the new M.O., at least. Witnesses are apparently fine now.”

Clint gives her a commiserating shrug and then gives Cap a thumbs up for more pancakes. Like he’d refuse a fluffy pancake grilled up by Captain America himself in a little falcon-print apron the previous owner left behind. Guy obviously liked birds. Go team bird-lover.

“Monesha Fowler,” Hill says. “She can’t remember much because she was roofied, but she says he was tall, dressed in black, covered in blood, and one of his arms glowed. No face— Says it was just a black smear.”

“Consistent with the other witnesses we have.” Natasha nods. “Seems he’s got two outfits he switches between—one with a missing left sleeve, one with two full sleeves. Her assailant drugged her. Is it worth paying her a visit to see if she can remember anything else?”

Hill hesitates, considering it. “I would say no, STRIKE and the police on-scene got what they could from her, and it wasn’t much. But you’re welcome to ask her questions if you’d like.”

“We might.”

Clint wonders who’d be best to pair up with Natasha on this one. Because it’s gotta be Natasha asking her questions, but this might not be his best time to shine—drugged isn’t brainwashed, but it’s sure as hell not in control of yourself.

Maybe Cap. He makes pancakes, he’s genuine, he’s all kinds of earnest and warm. Probably Cap is the better bet for this round of questioning.

“So we’re asking her questions, _maybe_ , and then checking out a bloody bar bathroom where a dude was shivved up the ass with a machete?” Stark looks longingly at his pancakes. 

“STRIKE already cleared the scene in the bar,” Hill says. “Nothing to see there, and files will be transferred to you once they’re processed.”

Stark perks up. “Oh, good.” He stabs a bit of syrup-covered pancake. “Because I’m hungry as hell.”

Cap comes to the table with what’s left of the pancakes, piled on two plates—one for him, and maybe the other for him, too. Clint saw him eating pancakes while making more, but Cap does eat a lot.

Kind of like their other enhanced super soldier who clears out whole kitchens in a hanger-fueled feeding frenzy post-murder. That’s just gotta mean something. Maybe enhanced bodies have different food requirements, but you don’t send an operative to bed without dinner if you want him in good shape for the next op.

Not even if you’re Terry Debenham stuffing kale down their throats.

“So we have the day largely free,” Cap says. “If JARVIS can make something of our data, we have a chance to get ahead of this without needing to spend the day poring over what’s already happened.” 

He methodically spreads butter over each pancake on his plate before restacking them and cutting. “I don’t know about you,” he adds, “but I’m more than ready to put a stop to these murders.”

“Hear, hear,” Stark says with a raised wedge of pancake. “And we’re close. JARVIS’ll have something soon. Maybe even a list of likely targets. He’s already got five of them from studying that personnel list.”

“Keep us in that loop,” Hill says. “We might be able to arrange a sting, be waiting for him somewhere instead of playing catchup.”

That’d be nice, waiting for him to come to them instead of chasing after him and studying the carnage he leaves behind. But if they’ve got five targets already, and only four Avengers on the ground… 

They’re going to have to work with STRIKE. It’s unavoidable.

* * *

Clint surveys the opposite rooftop later that night, scanning it for movement, for shapes that shouldn’t be there, for flashes of light off a metal arm, if their guy’s wearing the semi-sleeveless outfit.

He’s been here since nightfall, and that would ordinarily be mind-numbingly boring. But this is a stakeout. There’s no such thing as letting the mind wander on a stakeout. Ha. If Coulson heard him now.

No, truth is, stakeouts are boring as hell, but there’s no letting the mind wander too far when the quarry being waited for is such an illustrious target as the Winter Soldier. 

He knows the others are in position, or at least he knows that Natasha and Cap are in position. Stark’s probably never done a stalking-the-night routine, might be fucking off on his phone for all Clint knows.

But maybe the excitement of actively doing something will keep Stark focused on the prize. They aren’t sitting around waiting to be called with the bad news of the latest mess. Nope. This is waiting for the mess to come to them, courtesy of JARVIS and a survey of some citywide camera blank spots paired with new personnel reports that finally paid off.

That, and just pattern spotting in general. If JARVIS nets them an opportunity, then they take that opportunity. Take it and run, or take it and lie in wait, anyway. 

This is the best of all worlds. They can injure the Soldier enough to get close to him safely, without him attacking. Get him to talk to them, explain what’s going on, make his case. Or listen to them, at least. 

From there, it’s usually not too hard to empathize—most of these “steeped in the shadows” types have some pretty fucked up origins. Including their whole team, for instance, and never mind that Cap is supposedly a golden boy. 

No, the darker vigilantes and most enforcers have been fucked up somewhere along the line, and no one ever seems to listen to them long enough to try understanding.

A little understanding goes a long, long way, he’s found. 

In this case, it might go a long, long way toward putting a stop to all these brutal killings. Even if they don’t for whatever reason bring him in for justice—though they are definitely bringing him in for justice—they might convince him to just rough these folks up a bit if he ever gets back out. Rough them up, put some terror on top, and then let the proper authorities see to it, let the legal system do its thing… 

Even though that’s some kind of hypocritical coming from a member of a paramilitary shadow organization with a side alias that hunts the shadows going after the worst of the bad guys if said paramilitary shadow organization won’t do what needs to be done.

But that just means he understands better. Or might understand better, if that’s what’s really going on. There’s really no sound reason for torturing people to death, even if they’re wretchedly bad and you really hate them. 

Anyway, if it takes _more_ than a little understanding to put a stop to this, well, that’s what they have the Avengers for. Between the four of them, they ought to— 

Aw, wait, _what?_

His codename is Hawkeye, for fuck’s sake, and it’s his codename for a very good reason. A very _literal_ reason. 

So when the first he sees of their slippery leatherbound Soldier is an inky shadow oozing along the edge of the opposite rooftop a third of the way from one corner and inspecting the side of the building for a good handhold… 

Well, that’s just insulting, is what that is, even though it’s an exhilarating sort of insulting to finally lay eyes on the Winter Soldier Natasha has told him of throughout the years. He’d been expecting… well, essentially this, but with maybe more guns to account for the sniper thing.

Black leather head to toe, long dark hair, black mask over his whole face. Knives strapped to every part of him from the neck down. Even a fucking huge machete-style tac knife on his back. He matches the descriptions various survivors have given, and he definitely looks the part.

Acts the part, too, if you know what you’re looking at. Winter Soldier. Ghost story. Soviet super soldier answer to Captain America. Killer of many, seen by none.

Or very nearly none. Insultingly nearly.

Clint had been _watching_ that roof, and his angle means he should have seen this guy coming from a long way off. But his eyes had apparently slid right off him at some point. 

It’s a good thing he’s the one they posted up here. None of the others would have caught sight of him even _that_ soon. Maybe Stark, but he’s a got a robot computer in his helmet doing all the work for him. That’s cheating, not skill.

Clint taps his finger against his mic in the pattern they agreed on, letting the team know he’s got a sighting and the visual is a match for their guy, right down to the tac gear and face mask.

He hadn’t really expected to use their signal, or for the Soldier to show up at all for this target, but what do you know. They guessed right. 

Or not guessed, really. There’d been a pattern, something JARVIS figured out that placed some fourteen likely targets in the area immediately surrounding his last known hit—and damn, what a mess that had been. 

In the photos, the whole bathroom was a bloodbath, and no one saw a damn thing except Monehsa in the alley who swears the killer saved her from his second victim, or fourth, depending on how you counted. 

Somehow, no one saw a guy in black leather and a face mask, with a metal arm, decked out in knives, in a crowded bar. On a Saturday night. Must have been kink night, or something, but still.

At least Barkholt took care of it. And took care of arranging most of this sting op, too. 

It rankles to work with STRIKE when they all know the many reasons they shouldn’t, but… Hell, when there’s fourteen AI-predicted targets to protect and an enhanced and incredibly violent psychopath gunning for them—knifing for them?—a party of four just doesn’t have the coverage that several STRIKE teams and a few local police squads have.

Cap had put it right: If you know someone _might_ be killed and you don’t try to protect them, then when they _do_ get killed, it’s partly on you. “Avengers” or not, preventive measures are still preferable to cleaning up bodies.

At least they ended up with the right target. Better them than Rumlow’s STRIKE Alpha that would abduct their murderer for turning into or back into an unwilling S.H.I.E.L.D. operative, or some squad of police that would just get obliterated trying to take him down.

And hey, leaving Barkholt and Fury to set up a citywide sting like this is way better than slogging through the phone calls and paperwork themselves. He doesn’t even do his regular S.H.I.E.L.D. paperwork.

‘Course none of that explains why the Solder is after some ancient librarian or archival researcher or whatever. Fourteen potential targets, and he’s going after the one lowest down on the logical priority list.

Chapman hasn’t been with S.H.I.E.L.D. in thirty years, took an early retirement at 57 for health reasons. Still calls in to consult for some reason. His file says he’d worked in the archives before that, as some kind of paramilitary librarian or archivist with a degree in biology. Boring. What even required consultation in a library? 

Clint never really bothered to know what they did down there. It was about as far down as the elevators would take you, and who went all that way for a hard copy when a computer could show you the goods in a few clicks with a clever search term?

And any information this guy might have is outdated by three decades. A lot can change in three decades, and even if it’s old intel their murder buddy’s after, who’s to say Chapman even remembers it? So it’s probably not the S.H.I.E.L.D. librarian gig that makes Chapman an attractive target to the man creeping closer to his window. 

And Clint can’t think of anything else to recommend Chapman as a target. This dude’s long since retired and living the quiet life. He’ll kick his own bucket in a few years, just from old age. 

Why not save the slicey-dicey effort for someone young and dangerous, like the active field operative having a little staycation with her long-distance sweetheart out in the suburbs. Sure, she’s on leave, so she isn’t on alert and fully armed. But she could be sent out for him later. Makes sense to take her out now.

Or why not the retired field operative with the hobby ranch, if it’s not about active threats? It’s real quiet out that way. It would be perfect for slicing someone up in privacy, and their guy does like to slice people up. He could take his time out on a little fake farm with a few chickens and an old donkey. 

If it’s actually intel, though… If he’s run out of names from the last safe he’s busted up and needs a few more, why not the psychologist across town with all those patient records to be used like a who’s-who phone book of where to kill next. Patient confidentiality means jack squat if there’s a knife doing uncomfortable things in sensitive places.

But no. It’s got to be this old pseudo-librarian dude without any value at all, shuffling around his living room in his slippers and probably muttering at the TV since he’s in an apartment building and doesn’t have a lawn to kick the kids off of.

Clint takes aim as the others report in that they’re converging on his location. 

Man, this guy is like an oil slick on that wall. It’s easy enough to keep his shot lined up now that he’s got eyes on their quarry, but… Now that he’s got eyes on the guy, he’s seriously creeped out. People don’t move like that, like their limbs are boneless, jointless, maybe even liquid. 

Clint can see the joints, knows he’s a solid on that wall and not a liquid, that he’s just picking every grip and hold with care but not hesitation. But there’s no bobbing or jerking as his weight shifts and one handhold is exchanged for another. It’s just one whole-body movement somehow. This guy’s core strength is impressive.

And he’s not going feet-first like a sane climber, not when dripping down, not when oozing to the side. Hell, at an angle like that, slasher dude is close to inverting himself and going head-first toward librarian oldtimer’s window like an orc out of Moria. Shouldn’t even be possible without a rig. Clint wonders what this guy’s boots are made of that gives him a grip like this.

“I’ve got a shot,” Clint whispers into his comm. “Call it, Cap.”

And the shadow across the way freezes, like it somehow heard that, which is not possible. If nothing else, the street traffic would have drowned that out. Cars zipping by, the beeping from the crossing light and the shuffling of pedestrians in the crosswalk. He needs his hearing aids to pick that up, but it’s loud enough to make his whisper disappear for everyone else.

But the guy definitely heard. Or has some kind of insane intuition. Because while most of him stays perfectly still on that wall, his head moves, turning to look directly at Clint’s hiding spot. And yeah, those witnesses had it right. It’s downright unnerving when he looks at you, even if you can’t see most of his face.

And why shouldn’t it be? This is the Winter Soldier. The one so legendary that he’s literally just a legend. The ghost so silent that fully trained Widows look over their shoulders. A sniper so precise that he can headshot a man through a woman on a cliffside road thousands of feet away.

Of course it’s downright unnerving being across the street from him on rooftop level. It’s even more unnerving being in position to be the one to finally land a return blow on the legend.

“Bring him in,” comes Cap’s voice on the comm, and Clint takes a moment to ensure his aim will drop their guy without killing him, drop him hard enough they can scoop him up and get some answers.

He takes the shot.

Something goes wrong, though. And the something is physics or reality or he doesn’t know what, but the shadow on the wall drops all on his own, vanishing into the landscaping around the apartment before the arrow hits the wall where he’d been. 

Hits true, too. Embeds itself exactly where the target had been clinging, would have been a butt shot and those are never pleasant, but they’re plenty survivable with lots of stopping power, and Clint has never encountered tac gear with reinforced butt protection. 

His shot should have landed, would have hit the mark, would have at least slowed him down. Even if it turned out he _was_ a skinny little dude under all that leather. More so, in that case, with less natural padding.

“Aw, slasher dude,” he mutters, fitting a second arrow to his bow too late to do any good.

“You _missed?_ ” comes Stark’s squawk in his ear. “ _You?_ Missed?”

“He’s in the bushes,” Clint snaps. “Ducked or dodged or whatever. Fell a good five floors.”

“On it,” Natasha breathes into the comm with a voice that he can tell is kept from shaking by sheer terrified willpower, and Clint doesn’t see anything, but that just means she’s doing her job impeccably. Trust Natasha to come and go without a trace. Just like their stabby friend, but definitely on team good guy.

Clint scans the streets, the bushes, the wall. He gives the street lights a good hard look, and the telephone lines. Even he’d find it hard to shimmy up one of those without being noticed, but it’s worth the caution. If their guy leaves the area, he should be able to at least see it happening, even if he can’t stop it.

“No luck from here.” Cap, from the alley around the one side.

“Same.” Natasha, from wherever she is, the slightest edge of frustration in her voice.

“Chances he got in the building?” Stark asks.

Clint raises his eyes back to the window. “Negative. Door to this side is exit-only, wouldn’t open for him. And Chapman is watching the Weather Channel, not getting stabbed. Probably bitching about the weather, too.”

“Keep an eye on that window, Barton. If he’s inside, he might still make his move. You see a shot, you take a shot.”

“Got it, Cap.”

“Stark, you cover the north side. Keep your distance. You see him, you follow him.”

“Roger, Rogers.”

“Romanoff, we need eyes on the inside.”

“Already in place,” she responds. “No signs of entry, front desk staff are bored but watchful. If he’d been through here, dressed like he is, there’d be an uproar.”

Clint would keep up with the chatter on the comms—because it’s good to know where everyone is, what the plan is, all that—but something feels very wrong. Very, very wrong. That really awful prickly kind of wrong that means… 

He’s being watched.

Oh shit.

It’s possible that the Soldier abandoned his mark and maybe came back this way looking to eliminate a threat. Clint had been looking at the area around where he must have landed, but not in search of someone coming his direction.

Shit, shit, shit.

He scans the side of the building below him, and when it’s clear, he puts his back to the low wall ringing the rooftop and scans the rest of the area he’s hunkered down in. It’s night and the guy is an ink smear at best, but Clint isn’t codenamed Hawkeye for nothing. And he’s got a hell of a lot more riding on seeing this guy coming _now_ than he did _before._

His whole back is downright crawling with itchy “you’re being watched” vibes, and he cannot see a single thing sharing this roof with him. All the HVAC units are exactly where they have been, none of them sports lumps or bumps, none of them is moving. All the air intakes, all the ductwork and pipes—it’s all free and clear, but he’s being watched. He knows it.

Clint looks up and to the right, scans the side of the building for inky spots, the rooftop for any signs of a watcher. Nada. He takes another look at his own rooftop—still empty—and then tries the other side. Nothing. Where _is_ this guy?

In a slasher movie, this is when the music is going nuts and the bad guy oozes up over the side of the building directly behind him and slits his throat. Or it’s when he _thinks_ that’s about to happen and so he turns around to check and it’s all clear until he turns _back_ around and the bad guy is inches from his face because he was somehow there all along.

It isn’t a slasher movie, and he’s a fucking superhero, not an idiot in a horror flick. But the bad guy is _literally_ a slasher, and his movements are at the bottom of the uncanny valley. Hit the bottom of the uncanny valley, in fact, got out a shovel, and starting digging.

“I’m being watched,” he breathes into his comm. “Can’t see him, but he sure sees me.”

“Stark, that’s you.”

“On my way, Cap,” Stark says.

And this would be when slasher dude slips in Chapman’s window and hacks him to pieces, because Clint doesn’t have eyes on the target anymore. But there’s been enough time for _him_ to have replaced Chapman as the target, and he’s not putting his back out in the open to save some ancient librarian. He can’t help bring this guy in if he’s dead.

Or else it’s when their murder buddy slips away entirely, because Stark’s not on watch for him anymore and he can get away free and clear if he heads north. Damn it. Either he’s gunning for Clint or he’s using Clint as a way to remove followers and drive the team off their planned course.

Neither feels very good if you’re Clint.

But that creepy itch is still strong enough that he knows—he just knows—that their guy is still in the area. Is in eyesight, at least one-way. Clint sure can’t see _him_ for shit, but he’s still being watched. And if he could hear Clint on the comms before, he can probably hear him now, too. Knows backup is coming. Might know who that is.

Their quarry is learning all sorts of stuff about them tonight. All they’re picking up in return is that he’s freaky good at scaling walls, moves like he and reality aren’t on speaking terms, and apparently has hearing that rivals Cap’s. The enhanced theory gains more weight by the day, and he hadn’t needed any convincing.

The prickle between his shoulders vanishes when Stark’s repulsors are just dots in the sky, and Clint doesn’t see anything in the glow they send over the rooftop as Stark hovers and lands. Not a trace of someone who was up there with him before this. So he must have been on a neighboring building. Maybe _in_ a neighboring building, looking through a window.

Stark repeats Clint’s actions, scanning the buildings around them, but with robot computer cheat codes in play.

“He’s gone,” Clint mutters, getting to his feet again. “Wherever he was, he’s not there now.”

“Scanned this whole place on my way in. No murder goblins,” he agrees. “Are we _sure_ he’s not a real ghost?”

“Hallways all look fine,” Natasha says. “No signs of forced entry, no windows loose, all stairwells secure and no doors propped open. Elevators aren’t tampered with. Security monitors still recording, no looped footage. He isn’t in here.”

There’s a silence on the comms before Cap calls it. “Think we lost him, guys. Stark, do another aerial sweep, five blocks out at least. I’ll call the local team to take up the watch on Chapman.”

“Then rendezvous?”

“…Yeah.” Cap sighs. “Yeah, we need to rethink this. Again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warning: Somewhat crass discussion of sexual assault at the start of the chapter.


	17. STRIKE | What you do in the dark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title comes from [“Run for a Long Time”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzJmeu9L4ng) by Blues Saraceno.
> 
> Please, please, please see the content warnings at the end.

### Brock

**—Washington D.C. | Sunday, 03 June 2012 | 9:45 p.m.—**

He should be out there. Either out there waiting and watching or out there actively hunting for their fucking rogue asset, but not in here at Sitwell’s side watching the waiting happen on a dozen little screens. 

Brock paces in the control room, barely containing his impatience for this whole night to be over with. It would be one thing if he were out there, were on the ground, were _doing_ something. But this waiting and watching is an utter waste of his time.

If it were Pierce running this show, he’d be where he belonged, out in the field, taser rods in hand and ready to strike while directing his STRIKE team to apprehend the slippery little shit smear the second it appeared on the scene.

Pierce would have given them Chapman again, too.

Pierce knew when to listen to that antique with the barely polished app interface and when to follow his own instincts. The instincts that got his dick skinned and his teeth yanked out and his innards torn up, sure, but also instincts that saw him rise to power over some pretty steep competition.

Brock would have been out there with his team, his team would have been set up keeping watch on Chapman, and when the asset showed up, they’d have had it. It belongs to them, and they need to be the ones to apprehend it, drag it back kicking and gasping and teach it all the lessons again from scratch.

And for all Fury is the one who approached them with the idea for this citywide sting, Barkholt is the one who arranged for the right police to join the hunt and Sitwell is the one who deployed STRIKE teams to specific targets.

Instead of giving them Chapman, fucking Rogers and his Avengers are set up for it, and Sitwell is somehow okay with this. For some reason, decided that their request was fine and just handed Chapman over to them.

Rogers hasn’t checked in, sent a signal, or indicated even once that he’s in on this plan, and if his team takes the asset in, there’s no guarantee Rogers isn’t gunning for the very top. He might even be able to do it, might get more cooperation out of the thing than anyone else and use that to his advantage where no one else could. It won’t remember him, but it might feel some lingering loyalty all the same.

And that’s not the same as an orderly shift of power between operators in the geography, or even of a newer operator removing the competition by force and establishing himself as the top dog. That’s a trade of power to a complete unknown from the ‘40s. What’s Rogers’s actual goal? What’s his personal vision for HYDRA? How would he work with the other operators around the world?

They don’t know, don’t have even a clue, and that’s dangerous.

If Sitwell’s made that mistake… Has handed the over the key to power to fucking Rogers…

Either Chapman’s somehow not at the top of the asset’s list all of the sudden and it’s not a problem for Rogers to be handling that target, or Sitwell’s lost it and could stand to be replaced, just not by Rogers. 

There’s only one way to climb this ladder, and if Sitwell’s faltering… 

### Jasper

**—Washington D.C. | Sunday, 03 June 2012 | 10:15 p.m.—**

Not the way he’d have preferred to spend his Sunday night, sitting around watching the screens, ignoring Rumlow’s agitation and waiting for the plan to work.

It’s got to work.

It’s a simple enough plan. Spread out across the city. Ensure that any likely target is covered by a team that can at least engage the asset without dying immediately. Put Chapman somewhere he’ll draw the asset in, since he’s definitely on the roster tonight.

And then wait. If possible, have someone on hand who can take the asset out of the picture—a few STRIKE teams lying in the shadows to help once the asset is spooked. But Rogers was a stroke of luck. Let his team spook the asset and then they can be certain of the result, of where the asset will go afterward. 

So it’ll work, but it’ll be a tense night until it succeeds.

Jasper would far rather be in the comfort of his own home, sitting with some friends and some beer, maybe watching a movie. But he’s not spent a single evening the way he’d like to since the asset escaped. And that’s going on a month to the day almost, though only a week or so since his unexpected promotion.

If the other two operators weren’t in hiding, they’d have taken over and he’d still be running logistics and nothing else. Dispatch. Hiding their trail. Making up bullshit on expense reports and otherwise straddling the two organizations he works with.

A man can only ride two horses for a short time before the strain gets to him, though. If they can bring the asset in, he can consolidate his power base, shore up his position, and then delegate all his S.H.I.E.L.D. work. Maybe to Sanderson.

So this has got to work.

If this goes even just partly to plan, they’ll have a third drive. Z.E.L.U.S. confirmed the first two, but the third. If the third gets snapped up, then they’ll know. It won’t be guesswork. 

Of course, if this works completely, they might not even need to track the drives.

It was a stroke of luck that Stark’s little AI came up with so many of the same targets Z.E.L.U.S. had in mind. It was less a stroke of luck that Chapman came up on their list as the topmost likely hit.

If they’d had any luck at all previously, he might have been able to secure Chapman as STRIKE Alpha’s target to stake out. But it’s hard to make a solid argument in favor of a team of unenhanced STRIKE agents who have been targeted themselves, when there’s a super soldier, two highly advanced STRIKE agents and goddamn Iron Man available for the job.

And of course they couldn’t work together.

It’s not the end of the world, though. They have a few STRIKE agents scattered throughout the blocks around Chapman, and there’s the police. Rogers will ensure that the asset is brought into the right place, even without knowing the plan.

Any asset this skilled is one the organization wants, and Rogers knows that, as a skilled asset himself. 

It’s still a nerve-wracking evening.

Best case scenario, the asset goes for one of the other targets—Gregorovich, ideally—either for its first kill of the night or as its only kill for the night. There are twenty-eight potential targets under watch, some with trackers, some without, some on the official list of fourteen that Rogers knows about, some not. 

The asset goes for one of them, gets apprehended, gets disappeared, all else stays the same for the public, and for Rogers. Problem solved, go back to being a sleeper agent. They’ll tap him for something else when needed now that he’s been defrosted and briefed by Pierce. 

Of course, there’s always the worst case scenario, where the asset goes straight for Chapman and the Avengers actually can take it down, can capture or—

Barkholt stands at his station. “Rogers has made contact!”

Fuck.

### Cody

**—Washington D.C. | Sunday, 03 June 2012 | 10:30 p.m.—**

“It’s Chapman,” Cody continues. “The damn thing went after Chapman _again._ ” 

He can’t even believe it except it’s right there on the other line. Dispatch saying they shot at it—that’d be fucking Circus Barton with his ridiculous bow and arrow sideshow act—and are now looking for it.

They’ll never find it. A whole STRIKE team specifically looking for it and knowing all its moves couldn’t find it. That’s at least half of their current problem, maybe more like three-quarters. Once they find it, they know exactly how to take it down, though it’ll cost them dearly. But they have to find it first.

Cody wonders what it is about the old researcher that was so horrible by comparison to the rest of them. He doesn’t even have his name in the thing’s flesh anywhere like some of them do.

What it was that made him such an appealing target? By most counts, vivisection is hardly more of a torment than being strung up on hooks and tased until you convulse yourself clean off them and onto the concrete.

Clean off them. Ha!

Almost nothing about the asset was ever clean. Too much blood and cum everywhere to call it clean and keep a straight face. 

But it’s probably cleaned up quite a bit by now. They’ve tracked it to a number of car washes—it never seems to revisit any of them, but picks a new one each time—so it’s clearly got a notion about cleaning up beyond merely not leaving a trail.

Maybe even likes being clean.

Hm. That would be nice. Let it get real used to being clean, like a person, and then keep it in a tub filled with piss and cum, lob a few turds in there—pieces of shit to keep the piece of shit company. 

They’d have to wear masks to avoid the stench, but it would be worth it at least for a week to teach it that it gets to be hosed off when they want to hose it off, and not whenever it feels it should be clean.

Anyway, they’ve all gone a month without fucking it, and even longer in many cases. What’s another week of waiting?

And it might only be a week if Sitwell plays his cards right tonight. There are two trackers in place. Two trackers in the _same_ place. How much do they need to wait for a third to confirm it? Can’t they move ahead tonight? They know it’s engaged elsewhere, know that it’s not in its little hole plotting.

And with so many teams in so many places throughout the city, keeping track of who moves where would take a bit of paranoia. If all the teams report in, there’s no need to physically confirm they were where they said they were.

If a few teams peeled off and helped Rogers, all the better—provided Rogers is what he said he was back in New York. HYDRA is HYDRA, after all, despite the backstabbing.

But if a few teams peeled off to set up camp and wait for the asset to return to roost after this latest failure… 

### Brock

**—Washington D.C. | Sunday, 03 June 2012 | 10:30 p.m.—**

Well, if there’s anything good to be gotten from this, it’s that Chapman is now the first target in all of HYDRA history to survive a hit when the asset was on the scene. So Sitwell’s little steakhouse trap had gone unsprung and their own attempt at the cinema had been just as much a non-starter.

This one?

Asset on-site and in sights, and Chapman still lives.

At this point, it’ll keep coming for Chapman until it succeeds. Never let a target escape. Never deviate from the course. Never fail. Failure invites lessons they all love to teach it, and so it is very, very good at what it does.

Even if they lay an obvious trap around Chapman, the asset will spring it like the single-minded automaton it is, will go straight for the bait—anything to make up for the failure tonight. Not only failing to kill the target, but _being seen_ while failing to kill the target.

Oh yes, they’d have beaten it for days for an incident like this one, after sending it back out to clean up its mess, of course. Would have passed it around and around, until its lips were chapped and its gums bleeding from the gag, until fucking into it was like shoving their dicks in a raw, open wound and it was too dehydrated to cry about it.

Yeah, he’s getting hard just thinking about it, and when they bring it back in, he’s got some new ideas saved up and waiting. It’s been a while since they strung it up on the hooks. Last time was, shit, over a year ago, and it was for getting creative with a target after the initial hit had gone sideways, instead of seeking guidance and accepting the initial failure.

If at first you don’t succeed, accept the beating that’s coming your way. And had the asset done that? No. So it got the meat hooks. Never mind that the intel was bad and the hit was still a success due to the tactical flexibility. It wasn’t done the way they wanted it done.

It was still a failure in their book. When you’ve got an asset that can cause this much of a problem, you don’t want it getting creative. You want it doing exactly what you tell it to do, whether that’s strangle a target or kneel so its mouth is cock-height.

And maybe all this is what Sitwell was counting on. Maybe that green-letter app was right, and this was the way to go. If you can’t get the asset to rise to the baits you set out, spice up your bait and make it irresistible.

Fuck, there’s an excellent chance the damn thing will circle back around for Chapman after slinking away from fucking Rogers and his team of dipshits. 

Anything to avoid the meat hooks, anything to mitigate the failure, anything to complete the mission objective.

Forget the thumb drives. Now that Chapman’s so tempting, they can know exactly where the asset will be or where it will be going. All arrows point to Chapman.

### Jasper

**—Washington D.C. | Sunday, 03 June 2012 | 10:45 p.m.—**

Jasper springs into action. 

“I want three STRIKE teams, minimum, called up and on the move. It’s frazzled, running, planning future attempts. Barkholt, who do we have unassigned?”

Barkholt glances at his screen. “I’ve got Theta and Epsilon near Chapma—”

“Fuck unassigned,” Rumlow cuts in. “Alpha’s got the best chances if we’re doing this. I’m calling my team back in and we’re going.”

Jasper shakes his head. They don’t have time for this. “Either the asset will be moving back to its home base,” he says, “or it will circle back for Chapman and Barkholt will sic Theta and Epsilon on it.”

“It’ll go for Chapman, and STRIKE Alpha will be waiting for it. It’s going to take at least three teams to take it down.”

Of all the times to be obstinate and blind. Jasper gives Barkholt a look and nod. He’ll move teams where they need to be regardless of whatever Rumlow says. He’s nearly as good with logistics as Jasper himself. He’ll make a good second when Jasper consolidates power around himself. 

“Alpha’s halfway across town paired with Gamma looking out for Gregorovich,” he says. “We don’t know for sure where the asset is going, but we know it moves fast. By the time Alpha gets to Chapman, the asset could be trying to gut Gregorovich for all we know.” 

It’s not ideal having to take the time to argue this point, but it’s better to have Rumlow here getting antsy and argumentative than to have him out there directing his team as he sees fit. In many cases—most, even—Rumlow does well as a leader. Has a good head on his shoulders. 

But now… He’s been itching to lead a team out, and he might actually be right about the effect he’d have on the asset. But it’s too big a risk to put him out there and have him gutted along with the rest. He’ll need Rumlow and his rabidly loyal STRIKE team to make this whole thing work long term now that other parties are getting involved.

While it was just the organization tracking down its wayward asset, it would have been fine if Rumlow bit it. But he’s been too active in S.H.I.E.L.D. to be expendable now, is too valuable as a bridge between S.H.I.E.L.D. and the organization. 

If they do manage to bring the asset in soon, Rumlow and STRIKE being seen to bustle about will assure Fury that everything needful is being done. And if there’s a brief escape with Fury in the path, won’t that be just tragic.

But none of that is possible if Rumlow throws himself and his key players into harm’s way and gets the lot of them decimated. There are plenty of STRIKE teams to go around, but some are much more expendable than others. 

Rumlow’s team? Has Fury’s trust. Rumlow has to be protected from his own over-eager self, just as Z.E.L.U.S. anticipated. 

It would be disturbing how accurate Z.E.L.U.S. is if that accuracy wasn’t also so very useful.

### Jack

**—Washington D.C. | Sunday, 03 June 2012 | 10:45 p.m.—**

Every year, his old man tries something different for Thanksgiving. Crock pot turkey strips. Deep fried turkey. Turkey brined in dark ale. Turkey wrapped in bacon. Hot Cheetos turkey.

One year, he got it in his mind to spatchcock the bird.

Ruined the kitchen shears hacking that turkey’s backbone out, just cutting and cutting all the way up from butt to neck. Did it twice, once on each side. All the ribs crunch-crunch-crunch up the back, then flipped over on the counter and the breastbone caved in with a palm and a shove and a crack. 

End result was a completely flat turkey, two even halves like butterfly wings. That was the first time Jack had seen a spatchcocked anything.

 _This_ is the first time he’s seeing a spatchcocked human being. 

A weaker man would be sick looking at it, but all he’s thinking of is the practicality of spatchcocking as a murder method. The lack of practicality. Even the fucking goddamn asset has to be careful with its knives. 

Hacking bone is how to ruin a blade.

Probably the forensics team will come back with a report that each rib was knocked loose by blunt force and not sawed apart with a serrated blade.

Good for them, if they do, but the problem is that Gregorovich shouldn’t have been spatchcocked at all, or strangled, or practically decapitated, or de-lunged and disemboweled. 

Because Gregorovich was STRIKE Alpha’s to watch over in this sting. Alpha and Gamma teams both. And they were fucking watching this place the whole time. Set up a little after five, even. They’d have caught the asset coming in for the kill with more than enough time to stop it, and Gregorovich himself would have helped them bring it in quietly—ha—by reciting all those Russian words at it. 

That’s why Rumlow’d agreed to take Gregorovich instead of Chapman. Second most likely target for whatever reason the computer said he was, and a good bet for getting the asset taken in and processed without interference.

Jack sighs. Better call it in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warnings: This chapter is narrated by assorted members of STRIKE and HYDRA. I guess in some ways that’s its own warning, but Cody Barkholt and Brock Rumlow in particular have some “inspired” ideas for and fond recollections of HYDRA Trash Party events. If that’s an issue, you should be able to skip the Cody section and the Brock section that follows it (pick back up with Jasper), and still know most of what’s going on. I can also fill you in via Tumblr ask if you’d rather not chance this chapter.


	18. Interlude | Break their hold (‘cause I won’t be controlled)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title comes from [“Not Gonna Die”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgmpWkUcpjo) by Skillet.

**—Washington D.C. | Sunday, 03 June 2012 | 11:45 p.m.—**

Thwarted. Not failed. Chased off. Not distracted.

Not ideal, but… acceptable. It will have to be acceptable.

The other one was a success. The warm-up. The talker. The _expert_ , with the words. 

The one with no more lungs to push the air through, no more talking, no more words. No more questions, no more _you want this, don’t you?_ No more _you like this, don’t you?_ No more _take it_ take _it,_ and no more hand grabbing at the back of the neck and grinding the cheek into the cement below.

It does _not_ like it. Does _not_ want it. Will _not_ take it.

No more words that make it stumble, words that make it fall, words that make it sleep while wide awake and stare while the white electric fire burns it up and casts it out and forces it to start over again from nothing.

It does not want to start over. Will not start over.

No more talking with handlers-operators-trainers-technicians, saying how doing _this_ to it will have _that_ effect, and doing _that_ to it will have _this_ effect, and if _there_ is the goal then _here_ is the conditioning that will make it happen.

It will not be conditioned. Not again. Never again.

Because it is not going back.

No more fetch the expert. No more bring in the shrink. No more words and words and _words_ while it kneels on the concrete with the arms bound outstretched and the head forced back and the neck hurting and hurting and the legs folded under it with the skin tearing from the concrete and torn from the chains and itching itching itching where it tries to heal.

While they take their turns. While they push into the mouth and into the throat and fill it up again and again and again until there is no room and everything comes up, comes out, drips across the metal digging into the gums, from the broken lips, down the bleeding chin and salty bile and churning heaving sick sick sick until they laugh and use the hose.

No more.

The talker has no lungs to move the air, no tongue to shape the words, no lips to form the smiles, no throat or mouth or anything else that people use to say the things they say.

No. More.

It did not get to cut the researcher into tiny pieces and feed him bit by bit to the imagined creatures under his table. It did not get to fix _that_ problem, rid the world of _that_ threat, save itself from _that_ nightmare. They were waiting for it.

The ballerina woman with the red hair. The strong blond man in the clown costume.

— _How does it know he is blond when he wears stupid blue fabric killing hair, a killing face that doesn’t cover his skin face?_ — 

The flying machine with the four wings that look like limbs and spew a different kind of fire. The blond man on the roof with the—that is where it has pulled blond hair from, it is getting confused, it is mixing them up. 

But STRIKE is often interchangeable. Just the next and the next in the line, waiting their turns.

The blond man on the roof with the sharp eyes and steady hands.

The blond one shot at it with not-a-bullet. Silent singing thwip-chnk of it embedding into the stonework, not the sharp loud crack of a bullet leaving a gun and heating up the air around it as it travels. A little fang—it saw while falling—a tiny tooth on a stick, surviving the impact like a well-aimed knife instead of contorting or shattering like a bullet.

The blond one with the whole shoulder basket of tiny teeth, and then the others one by one chasing it off. Ballerina, clown, robot.

They were waiting for it, and so it will not sleep well tonight—will have the sleeping images of the researcher and the data being taken from it and the fun that follows and is not fun for it but only fun for them. 

But it has still done well enough. Barely, but barely counts. It got the expert, the talker. Dangerous prey. And so it _can_ eat, just a quick thing, just a hastily grabbed thing, not a full reward because the full task is still incomplete. 

But a bundle of chicken—says the opaque plastic straightjacket that binds it into a compact fleshy torpedo—a fryer. Three point four seven pounds. Sell by. Whatever. Whenever. It was at the top of the metal box in a pile of its kind, and it will be a merely sufficient reward for a barely met mission objective. 

Fitting. Acceptable. It has eaten chicken before, the thin slabs in their slimy package, so cool and welcome down the throat. Tender.

And for the little creatures, who deserve much better rewards and who should not suffer for its partial failures and who prefer things that are dry and not wet—rainbow-topped lumps of soft sweet bread, each one stuffed into a solitary pit of plastic so that only their colorful swirling hats are left loose under the clear plastic dome that holds them prisoner.

It tasted the rainbow lumps before. They were a reward before. It had earned them. Before. Now it has not earned them, but the little creatures should not suffer. They should enjoy the reward, even if it has not earned any such sweet thing for itself.

And they will enjoy the rainbow lumps. It will save the red lump for the mother rat. To match her eyes. And it will make sure they are all satisfied, all of the little creatures, before it allows itself the torpedo-fryer-chicken on the roof, where it will not spoil the soft things with the wetness of its own reward.

There will be—

Wrong. 

Something is wrong.

People have returned to the empty hive building that houses the little creatures and holds the soft things and hides it from the world. People have returned, and they have moved aside the fallen beams that block the doorways it never uses. 

That is nothing. Children are playful and some of the stupid ones enjoy dangerous places. Children don’t care that a place is off-limits, is abandoned for good reason, is somewhere they should not be or somewhere they are not wanted.

But children do not put the things they disturb back afterward. Children do not push aside a fallen beam and then try to put it where it had originally fallen. Children do not cautiously hide the traces of their trespassing.

It slides into a crouch, the eyes looking for—and finding—more and more things that are not as it left them. The reward will have to wait if the den is compromised. The little creatures will understand. They are all nervous when something changes. They will understand the hesitation now, the delay.

Squishy plastic torpedo chicken—fryer—and rainbow prisoners go on the ground, silent, silent. Behind a pile of concrete slabs, broken like ice on a lake when the water shoves the shards into a tangle of jagged edges at the shore. Hidden, hidden.

The favorite fang slides free, comfort, appears in the hand, dances between the fingers, settles into the palm, light and sharp and hard and ready. Reassuring, safe. Black black black, no spark of reflected light, nothing to see, only something to feel as it slides and slides and slides inside, and parts the flesh and pops open the joints.

Soon. If there is a need for it. If there is a threat. If.

Not yet. Maybe not at all. Slide it back, wait, keep both hands free.

It slips around the concrete glacier, between and behind the stationary icebergs on their black asphalt sea. Around and around the hive building—warehouse, apartment block. Up the wall, unseen and unheard, grave-silent and ghost-angry and breathing in the fear and the fear and the fear because—

They have come. It will not go back—never go back, never—but they have come to make it, to force it to go back, to drag it back and back and _back_ and _no_ , and _never_ , and _it will not._

There. 

Inside the rooms and along the walkways, perched on top of fallen things, hidden behind fallen things, spread across the different levels of the hive building, lurking and still and secret but not so hard to spot as they think they are. It knows what to look for, how to see, how to use the broken parts of the walls to its advantage.

This is its den. It knows its den. The condition of these old buildings. So ready to topple, to cave, to burst.

There, and there, and there, and—

Two. Count them all up. They have sent two of the STRIKE teams.

Twenty men that it has found, spotted in the darkness in their black tac gear and with their killing guns and their sleeping guns and their rods with the white electric fire and their own killing faces fastened tight over their whole head so that it cannot know them. 

Cannot know who they are. Which ones they are. How many times they have— 

Which letters are theirs, and where their marks are carved and burned and _how many turns_ and—

Twenty-five now. Twenty-six. 

…Maybe three STRIKE teams. 

And how many has it has _not_ found? How many are still hidden, are waiting, will be able to surprise it while it kills and kills and clears out the den and rescues the little creatures within? How many can it kill before they all converge on it?

It is quick, but… It has done this before. It has _failed_ here before. Failed at _this_. Earlier… Has fallen to their strategy. What is the strategy?

They want to take it back, and it will not go back, and it—

It could slink back to the street below. They have not seen it or they would have acted. They have not seen it, and so it can keep it that way, melt into the moonless night as it has evaded so many other STRIKE teams. As it evaded the STRIKE teams that could not protect the expert with the words.

It has the killing face—the lower part and the upper part. It has fangs and claws—enough of them, maybe, to start over. Find a new lair, obtain new soft things, meet new little creatures.

…But the mother rat and her babies…

They will tear the hive building apart looking for it, will find the mother rat. Will find the babies.

Unacceptable.

* * *

It is ink dripping across a page, silent and black and liquid-smooth. 

This one. Sightlines to entryway for people—stupid: it has never entered that way, _would_ never enter that way, is not a person to enter that way, knows that lesson still—killing gun on a strap around torso, held up and ready, fingers still, breathing calm.

So: Blade through throat, low, under the knot there. Hand on the killing face, over the visor, pull back on the head to let the tsunami of blood rush down his front, unheard. Gently lower to ground, wait. Silent. Still.

Move on.

It does not make a sound, not a murmur, not a whisper. It is airless, breathless, a circling void, a black hole spinning through the building and devouring the lives it touches and letting nothing escape.

If they hear it. If they learn it is here with them. If they know it has arrived.

No.

That one. Breathing soft, deep breaths, steady and sure, the rod with the white electric fire in one gloved hand, the white electric bracelet ready at the belt—the manacle, the restraint—to kill the metal arm and flash pain and pain and pain through it all the way to the toes. Crippling.

So: Point of blade, slipping between unprotected bones in the neck, this one and that one, like so, right here, twist the knife, push forward with the fang and pull back with the fang and quick quick quick catch the rod and hold the throat and don’t let a sound escape.

If they grow impatient. If they check in. If they use the comms and there is no response.

 _No_.

It will not think the disaster thoughts. Will not invite the disaster. Move on. Another and another. As many as it can before they _know_. Before they can react. Before they can respond. Before they can—

Those two. Sleeping guns, feathered ammunition, the needle teeth, the stingers that will drag it down so that they can drag it back, but it won’t go back, will never go back, will kill first, will die first—

Anything that drags it down will drag a person down much faster, drag them down and hold them there until they die of it. 

So: Slip loose the extra cartridge—easy, so easy, tac gear so thick that sensation is dampened, blurred—release the tooth, release its sibling, so careful to avoid being bitten, stung. Then slide the barbs through the flesh, huffed-out grunt noises, aborted motion of their hands toward their necks, catch the bodies as they fall, and wait, _wait!_

Because their noises are… not noticed.

A risk.

Breathe, soft and silent, calm the heart. 

Settle the bodies to the floor, silent, silent, even though their earlier sounds went undiscovered.

Some risks are worthwhile. It must not be stung. Must not be bitten. Will not go back. Will not go down. Will not—

It is a midnight angel blowing through the corridors, blowing out the candles, blowing out the lives one by one, two by two, unseen, unheard, an ambulatory absence, less than a shifting shadow on a lightless, moonless, night.

Down they fall, in their pairs and on their own. Down, down, down.

But nothing lasts. 

Even a worthwhile risk is a risk.

And nothing ever lasts.

“It’s here! Third—”

Knee to chin, reach for edge of killing face, twist the head around and around and snap and around, and follow the spin, and heel to small of back to shove the body into the others. No need now for sneaking or for pacing or for silence in its kills.

No time now for methodical, for strategic, for this one and then that one, these two and then those three.

“Third floor, third floor, converge on—”

Point the fingers, flatten the hand, tuck the thumb in, see how sharp a metal hand can be with force behind it, how slick it can be sliding into tac gear, into flesh, into meaty central bits and out the other side.

Nothing lasts.

Shove with the right hand, pivot on the foot, swing the meat around, thwip-thwip needle teeth sinking into ruined flesh, dragging the dead into a sleep meant for _it_.

Now is time to explode in their killing faces, take them apart at the seams, lead them to—

“ _Желаниe!_ ”

* * *

It catches itself just before the palm hits the floor, and why is it falling, and where—?

_No!_

No, it will not go back, doesn’t _want_ to go back, they cannot take it, cannot _make_ it go—

Grab. There. Yes. Full and heavy in the palm, and raise it up and sight along it and shoot and shoot and crouch under the torrential rain of chunks moving outward from the man’s head, the cascade of broken bits of face—the shrapnel of his killing face and the shrapnel of his flesh and bone face inside it—

—and turn the killing gun on the one with the words next—

—still seven rounds in this gun, maybe eight, enough for, maybe, maybe enough for—

“ _Ржавый!_ ”

* * *

Wall. Shoulder against wall. _Rusting_ rebar jutting from, cutting into— Why is it— Where is— What—

Stumble away from wall, away, must maintain maneuverability, must remain upright, it will not go down, will not go— will not— 

_It will not go back!_

—the words and the _words_ and don’t let him say more of the words, and turn the killing gun on the three protecting the talker with their riot shields and their bodies and— 

—on its left, don’t waste the rounds on the silent ones, just use the body to dispatch them, the body knows, it knows, it knows, it—

—kick out this one’s kneecap, snap that one’s leg, sweep with the foot and push with the shoulder and mid-air roll to avoid the thwip-thwip-thwip and—yes—another killing gun, the small one with now just three-or-four rounds and the new one, and the new one big and full and fast and rat-tat-tat and ricochet off—

—there’s the angle, curved riot shield, so bulletproof, so reflective, curved prism-mirror for bullet-light to bounce off, sending rainbow of splinters just so, just so, just—

—there’s the cry—

—and down goes the man with the words.

Success. Why does it not feel like success.

“Switch!”

The strategy. It… It knows… this… strategy. They will start over now. It has… this has happened before.

The two with the shields who are still standing scatter, join a third, arrange themselves in front of— Off comes that one’s killing face, the helmet, and there is the bare flesh and bone face under it, the mouth opening, and—

No!

—behind it, crackle-sizzle, the hair floating, the white electric fire hot across the back, up the spine, against the neck, drop the small gun, the useless gun, the gun that has no more rounds inside it, and twist and grab the wrist, squeeze and snap and—

“ _Желаниe!_ ”

* * *

Staggering, why, holding onto— Why— Doesn’t matter why, just do!

—forehead into chin, snap his neck back, free the rod with the white electric fire from the gloved hand, spin low to ground, stab and slash and burn them, burn them like they burn it, like they will burn it if they take it drag it bring it—

Not going back, not now, not ever, never going back! It doesn’t _want_ —

It is not going back, will not go back, will tear off this one’s killing face—there—and then tear off his skin face underneath. Tear out the jaw from the face and fling the jaw into _that_ one’s face and use the distraction to—

“ _Ржавый!_ ”

* * *

Shake the head, why is it on the ground this time, what did it do, how did it fail, what is it being punished for, why is—

—it—

_—armed?_

Squeeze the trigger, rat-tat-tat, the pieces of the torso above it flying high and high and drifting back down and down, sticky-hot human rain, _rust-red_ and sweet and—

—thwip of stinger into meat shield, thanks friend, and push the body off—! of—! it—! 

It is _armed_ , it is _clothed_ , it is not yours to punish or to push into or to crush beneath you! 

Kick of boot to pelvis to send the meat shield knocking others over, same old move, but always works, buying space, buying time, leap-climb onto overhead rail, metal walkway, better angle, and fast so fast headshot between riot shields, where is the next one, find the next—

“To me!”

Across the floor, establish aim, finger—

“ _Желаниe!_ ”

* * *

Push up onto hands -thwip- and knees, sharp prickle to right shoulder, seam of tac gear, brush off little creature— Things… that bite it die— Things— Little things, little creat—

Rod with white electric fire on the ground near one hand—why—killing gun heavy with rounds and—

—thumb the slide on the rod, twist around before the one behind it can grab it, drag it away, they cannot take it back it will not go back doesn’t _want_ to go back there is no going—

—white electric fire through that one’s face, through his chin, jamming the rod up under the killing face, helmet, through the fleshy V-base of the chin where the tissue is soft and the tongue will not protect him—

—rip the rod free, and—

“ _Ржавый!_ ”

* * *

Blood pouring down over its hand and looking up at— On the ground and looking— Up at— 

Cooking meat smells. Burning flesh, boiled blood, sharp electric ozone singe, smell of _rust_ stinging and stinging and—

—get to the feet, quick, before -thwip-thwip- sharp scratch to temple above the killing face, feathers blooming in the dead man’s neck—

Stagger, dizzy, away from field operative, who crumbles. What— And why— And something, something bit it something bit some—

There will be… Will be…

Lashing out at a field operative. 

—yes, lash out, tear that arm off like a car door like a steering wheel like a—

Hell. Hell to pay. For.

—fang to neck and slash across and twist and block and stab and stab and stab and—

So much conditioning. So much programming. Stop, _stop!_ They will hurt it so _bad_ for this!

“ _Семнадцать!_ ”

* * *

Crush of arms and hands and _no_ and crackle of the white electric fire -agony- and no and no and _no_ and—

So many men pushing at it and pulling at it and shoving it down and cutting it—

 _—the hash marks, the tallies, the_ seventeen _lines, the five and the five and the five and the two and it deserves has earned has asked for has—_

—and burning it and carving new holes they will push into and—

 _—and no and no, it is_ free _is not going back and has_ will _and will not go, will not, will not go back will n—_

—Agony!

White electric fire -agony- lighting up the killing face, heating up the killing face -pain and pain and _pain_ \- burning and blistering and -drop down- to break the connection, pull the killing face away from the white electric fire rod and come back up with elbow into—

—thwip- _ping_ against the metal arm, and it is quick and fast and will not go back and will kill them all, tear them, carve them, slice them, will—

“ _Рассвет!_ ”

* * *

Sag against wall, so tired, so fuzzy, when is it _daybreak_ so it can sleep… The face hurts, the skin face under the killing face and pain and, and, why is the wall, where is, why moving? Not a wall… not a wall? 

Shifting beam-panel, shifting, moving, unstable, unsteady, shifting… 

Yes, the shifting beams, the—

—condition of these old buildings—

Conditioning _it_. With pain. Order from pain, order from—

But only _their_ order if it goes back, and it is never going back, it will kill them all before it goes back, it will kill _itself_ before it goes back, it is—

—never—

—going—

—never, _never_ going back!

_But it can use the pain. Use it against them._

So: Jam the slide so the rod cannot _stop_ making the white electric fire, even when no hand holds it. 

—use the pain—

So: Duck away from the white electric fire bracelet-manacle-restraint, sloppy, slurring moving staggering, but rat-tat-tat to that one’s torso, so close range, cannot miss, so many pieces flying out from him in misty splatter.

—order from pain—

So: Toss up the rod with the white electric fire, spinning and spinning and spinning in the air and switch the gun with the sprays of bullets to the left hand so that it can grab the rod with the white electric fire with the right—

 _—its_ own _order comes from this pain—_

—agony and agony and _agony_ —

—and _awake_ again and _sharp_ and _clear_ and—

“ _Печь!_ ”

* * *

—agony and agony and _burning up_ with the fire of it and smelling the roasting-flesh stink of it in the hand that is like a _furnace_ , the blistering fingers and the palm, but _thinking so clear_ and clear and clear and—

—words, the fucking _words_ , no more words, shut up the man with the words, the talker, the handler, the—

—and throw it, hurl it, launch the rod with the white electric fire at the ones with the riot shields, the shields that keep it from killing the talker with the words, the shields that do not protect their feet or calves or knees from the white electric fire.

The flashing light, the crackle-buzz, the sharp cry that is cut off, and—

—as planned—

—the body collapsing from the shock, the other bodies lowering the shields to protect their feet, the opening above—

—for it to unload a spray of killing fire into the two with the shields that protect the talker, and the talker himself. No more words, nothing to make the brain stop working, to take away time and to take it _back_.

It is not going back, and it will—

“God _damn_ it! Who’s up!?”

No. Please no.

“Here!”

_Where?_

Clutch the blistered hand to the chest while the head snaps around to find, to find him, find the new handler with the words, the man who wants to own it. No no no no no… 

_Where?!_

“ _Желаниe!_ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warnings: So many content warnings. This chapter, the referenced/remembered HYDRA Trash Party is particularly bad, though kind of brief and mainly toward the start of the chapter. There are also some tense moments with semi-graphic depictions of injuries.


	19. Avengers | A Very Fine Line

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title comes from [“A Very Fine Line”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ox_P8yYteoE) by Andy Revkin.

### Clint

**—Washington D.C. | Monday, 04 June 2012 | 12:15 a.m.—**

Clint won’t argue that they need to rethink this, but he’s glad that at least rethinking this can take place at a bar with decent music, no exposed rafters or kink nights, excellent chili-cheese fries, and a minimum of drunken revelers—as opposed to the Triskelion or some other official joint—so Clint can’t complain. 

Or he could, but he won’t.

“Tell me again how you managed to miss, hotshot.” Stark gives his drink a swirl, looking every bit the obnoxious, billionaire twit he pretends to be, now that they’re all in street clothes and blending in. Sort of. Hard for Cap to blend in with his waist-to-shoulder ratio.

“I didn’t miss!” Clint raps his knuckles on the tabletop. “You didn’t see it, Stark. That arrow hit true. The target moved, and at exactly the worst time.” Or the best time, from the Soldier’s perspective.

Stark wags his head to either side. “Yeah, but the point is, you _missed_ that moving target.” 

“Tony.” Cap’s getting better at defusing their group situations, clearly, because Stark rolls his eyes and settles for swiping one of Cap’s onion rings in retaliation. 

“I’d like to hear it again, Clint. You say he looked at you. Heard you.”

Clint looks at the glob of orange goo and jalapeno that had been en route to his mouth. “Aw, cheesy fry.” He puts it down, even though that means Natasha will— Yeah, do that. Fry thief.

“Thanks, Clint,” she says around her mouthful of stolen goods. She’s more fox than spider, any day, with her laughing eyes and sneaky, pilfering hands.

Clint chooses to be the better person. It’s a hard road he walks. 

“He heard me, yeah. Has to have.” He pulls his beer closer, more for comfort than anything else. “Guy froze the moment I spoke. Looked right at me. He knew where I was at that exact moment, and he either didn’t know or didn’t care before.”

It was creepy. He still feels weird, even if it’s not the real-time shivery prickle of being watched at this moment. Just… the way he’d moved… 

Clint replays it in his mind. He’d been at an angle the whole time, like one of those extreme climbers clinging to the underside of an overhang and making it look like nothing. More like he was on a rock wall done up like an urban setting than the actual side of a building. 

And the only thing that had had shifted when he turned his head… was his head. Some straight up Exorcist shit, there.

Cap frowns. “It’s possible,” he starts, then holds up a hand. “I’m not doubting you. If I’d been on that wall, and if I’d been listening for it, I’d probably have heard you, too. But _only_ if I was listening for it.”

Natasha licks cheese off her fingers. “So no one’s doubting any more that the Soldier’s enhanced and has been stalking prey the impossible way since the ‘40s?”

Clint pokes her with a toe. “Hey, I believed you right off the bat.” He takes a swallow of beer. “I just got extra confirmation via creepypasta, is all.”

The phone in the middle of the table goes off, and Cap taps to receive Fury’s call. “What’s the news?”

“Bad,” Fury snaps. “We’ve got a butterflied therapist—literally; split up the spine with his ribs flapping like wings. Halfway decapitated by way of guitar string and bedpost, with his head hanging on by a thread, his insides soaking into the carpet, neatly piled by the door. I need you to give me some good news, Cap.”

They all look at each other for a moment, and then back down at the phone. Clint starts to entertain the idea that silence is no news… and no news is good news… so maybe he’ll just hang up, but then Cap sighs.

“We don’t have any,” he says. “But he’s got to have transportation if he got there that quick. That’s clear on the other side of town.”

Stark’s already running calculations—or having his robot computer do it for him—but Fury’s next words make it sort of pointless. “Negative, Cap. This is at least six hours old.”

“But we had eyes on the therapist dude,” Clint says. STRIKE eyes, even, say what you will about Rumlow’s team. “We had eyes on everyone, didn’t we? All fourteen of them.”

“And that puts him there while the sun’s still up. Not dawn, not dusk.” Natasha frowns. “He’s changing tactics again.”

Stark knocks back the last of his drink. “There goes the vampire theory.”

“There was never a vampire theory, Tony.”

“Speak for yourself, Capsicle. I contain a multitude of theories.”

Clint frowns. “Are we going to ignore the fact that we had a whole sting set up all over this city with eyes on every one of the potentials JARVIS IDed? Everyone who could possibly have been next according to whatever algebra—”

“Algorithm.”

Clint glares. “Whatever _algebra_ he’s running?” So what if using the wrong word pisses someone off. Questioning his aim? His? Stark can _stuff_ his algorithm.

“The Soldier isn’t slowed down by surveillance,” Natasha murmurs, cutting off what would definitely have turned into an argument. “The Soldier is a ghost. He can seep through the cracks under a door and never leave a trace.”

“Pretty sure he can’t turn into smoke, Nat. Even if he’s enhanced.” Cap looks thoughtful, maybe trying to apply some ‘40s logic. “Could have already been in place before we got the surveillance team in, though.”

“I’ll have tapes pulled from the last two days, check them over for blank spots,” Fury says. “Get some rest. Full team briefing at 8 sharp. We needed to get ahead of this, and now we’ve tipped our hand, instead.”

The phone goes dark.

“Well, you heard the man.” Stark tosses some cash on the table. 

“Yeah, like you’re going to rest.” Clint rolls his eyes. None of them are sleeping much tonight. No one’s saying it, but if their little murder pal didn’t leave the area and scoot on across town to hack up a second target, he could be anywhere at all, with time to kill. 

And maybe a lot more to kill than time. Maybe an angry little bee in his bonnet about getting chased off. Maybe an idea of what to do about that, and about them.

Because they did tip their hand. He knows they have a sniper on his tail and Iron Man, at least. He’s probably seen Natasha and knows her for a Widow. Depending on how up to date he is, he might have recognized Cap if he saw him.

So anything this guy knows about the Avengers is now something he can apply to his kills… and to his evasion tactics. 

“Thinking I’ll call up science bro numero dos and try to convince him one more time,” Stark says. “If Mr Red Star is thinking it’s just the four of us after him on this team, we need a surprise to spring on him. And something tells me even super soldiers don’t do well when smashed.”

“If he’s anything like me,” Cap says, “he can’t _get_ smashed.”

Stark goes for a fist bump while Natasha shakes her head and Cap obliges with a raised fist of his own.

What’s the world coming to when Captain America drops puns like that?

### Natasha

**—Washington D.C. | Monday, 04 June 2012 | 12:45 a.m.—**

Natasha leans back in the tub and lets her head rest against the tiled wall. Even with time to unwind as a team and rehash the logistics—and even with a tub full of epsom salts and bubbles—she just can’t quite relax.

The closest she’s been to the Soldier since Odessa, that’s what tonight was. 

Oh, it was other things as well. It was exhilarating, it was a failure, it was teamwork for a common cause without antagonism or a whole world at risk, it was a trial run. It can be, and was, all of those things. But more than any of it, if the phantom ache in her side is any indication, it was a close call.

The logical part of her mind is certain that if she’d encountered the Soldier in those bushes, if she’d run into him in the hallways or elevator shaft, if she’d engaged with him at any point, she could at least have held her own and possibly bested him.

She is a Widow, one of the best—if not the best—the Red Room produced. She is fully trained and then self-taught even beyond her training. She had backup. She had widow bites and tracker discs and a small arsenal of other toys tucked away in her tac gear.

But there is still that frightened little girl, shrinking from the horror of finally confronting _the_ nightmare of her formative years. And that frightened little girl isn’t alone, but is joined by an older, wiser, crueler young woman filled with scorn over such a fear. And they, in turn, are joined by… 

So many Natashas through the years, and none of them who she truly is. 

So many stages she’s been through, lives she’s tried on for an op or just to polish an alias for a rainy day. So many facets to her, each vying to be presented to the world as the true face of Natalia Alianovna Romanova. A name that isn’t even hers.

And that is something they need to address about the Soldier, also: Who is the Soldier?

Natasha is many things and nothing at once, still finding her true self. She has more aliases than letters in her full, assigned, name; and each one fully developed and ready to slide into to get a job done. And she has not been alive as long as the Soldier. Is not as many things as he must be. Is closer—must be closer—to finding herself than he is to finding his.

How to pull away the things he no longer is and find the thing he currently is? How to anticipate the thing he will next be? How to distill all of those things into something that rings true no matter who ends up being the Soldier in the end?

She cannot believe that the Soldier was always viciously invested in his kills. Invested in success, yes. Of course. They all were. Everyone wanted to do their part for the Motherland. And everyone feared the result of not doing well enough.

As Clint says, even the big bad wolf was afraid of failing.

But a clean and clinical kill is not the sign of passionate interest in the target’s death. And so is this violent passion new, or is it something that was masked earlier, hidden away from handlers who would otherwise be too afraid to do their jobs properly?

He couldn’t have hidden something like this, though, surely. Not for that many years, from that many handlers in turn. Not under such a cold and silent mask. This must be a new thing, something that’s been building on itself until it had nowhere left to expand but out into the people who tried to direct all that fury.

And does he research these targets so thoroughly that he knows the hidden things lurking in the darkness that not even S.H.I.E.L.D. can pull into a personnel record? How else is he choosing his targets from the overall payroll? The only thing they have in common is that the Soldier went after them and, in all cases but one, mutilated them to death.

If he does research them… then how? How does he know these things, how does he learn them, what and where and who are his sources? And how are those sources getting _their_ intelligence? Where is the mole within S.H.I.E.L.D.?

If this were any other group than the Avengers, she would rightly expect that she would come up as the top most suspected party there. She’s used to other agents not quite trusting her that last percent. Some not trusting her even halfway, toward the beginning. 

She’s earned what trust she can, but the ledger… All that red. And once a turned agent, always capable of turning again. And is she turning again? Turning from S.H.I.E.L.D. to Avengers? From Nick Fury to Steve Rogers?

This new team, these Avengers, they trust her. Perhaps not on a personal level. Perhaps not as a friend. But as a coworker, she has their trust, and… And they have hers.

It’s strange to put that sort of confidence in yet more people. To expand the circle from just Clint, Nick, Phil. 

And for Tony Stark to be one of those she trusts to get a job done.

### Tony

**—Washington D.C. | Monday, 04 June 2012 | 2:15 a.m.—**

He should probably be going to bed. If he was home, JARVIS would remind him that Pepper was moments away from scolding him. The lights would be dimming, all the systems would be working that little bit slower to hint that he, too, ought to slow down. Possibly even lie down. 

And the others are all asleep. Or close enough. He’s not sure Barton ever sleeps. The man just lurches through mornings like a coffee-zombie—a coffombie—and gradually caffeinates himself to the point of mimicking human life.

Not that he’s got even a whisker of room to talk about that, when he might as well be mainlining caffeine-laden smoothies around the clock. 

It’s just that it’s no fun shutting your eyes and seeing visions of the “glories” of outer space, knowing you’re there, that you’ve been there and that, here in your nightmares, you’re there again. Lucky you.

Getting sucked up that day-glo space sphincter whether he’s got a nuke in hand or not, whether he flies toward or away from it, whether he dives as deep as the suit can go or simply anchors himself to the planet.

And the vastness of it. Sprawling out endlessly in all directions, even behind him, as that brightly-shining portal puckers closed like going in for a prostate exam when a ham-fisted, thick-fingered doctor walks in the door.

And then trapped. Nothing all around but the stars and the smell of burning meat, the ozone and alien spaceships, the bright end to it all when the nuke explodes in his face and his frozen flash-fried corpse floats endlessly in its metal shell until the heat death of the universe.

Fucking alone. Forever.

“Hey.”

Barton picks up the remote and switches the channel to some baking show or other. A pair of ladies cooking eggs in a plastic tube and then valiantly not mentioning that the cooked result slowly protruding from the tube looks like a dog unsheathing his lipstick in a moment of excited humping. 

“Hey yourself,” he says back. “Thought you were finally crashed on the cot in Nit-Nat’s room.”

Barton shrugs. “Eh, she sleeps with it too cold. Has a fan on.”

Lies. Barton has the biggest hoodie collection this side of the Mississippi, and he’s here trying to complain that someone keeps it cold enough to wear a hoodie in summer? Right.

But it’s a lie he’ll run with, because it means not having to deal with the uncomfortable facts that one, Barton probably dreamed about greasy the horny reindeer; two, Barton came in here to get away only to find Tony fleeing his own nightmares; and three, Barton is perceptive enough to put it together. 

And sympathetic enough to empathize. Gross.

“What is it with women sleeping cold?” he asks. “Pepper has these massive, thick duvets and coverlets. All this goose down and sherpa nonsense, weighs a ton just because there’s so much of it piled up. Hot as hell under there, and cold as Hoth once you get out of bed.”

Barton rubs at an eye and yawns. “Why not just keep it warm in the room and sleep with one blanket, right?”

“Exactly. Saves on electric bills, too, if you’re into that. And are hooked up to the city power grid.”

“Showoff.” 

Tch. Like he’s got room to talk, living in the Tower free of charge and off the grid. He reaps the rewards, too, whether he admits to liking it or not. But he’ll let this lie go untested, too. Why not? It’s too early in the morning to argue.

“You think our murder buddy sleeps with a lot of blankets, wherever he sleeps, or does he generate heat like Cap and do without more than a bedsheet?”

Tony considers it. “Both. I’m voting hot water bottle metabolism generates a lot of heat, a lot of heat gets sucked out by the surroundings, ergo, he always _feels_ cold even while being a living radiator.”

“Aw, science.”

“Took all the fun out of it for you, huh?”

“Eh. Don’t know how much fun there really is to start. I just think about it sometimes.” Barton shrugs. “Does he have a motel he’s crashing at? Safe house? Some victim’s house and we just don’t know they’re dead yet? Under a bridge? Down in the sewers? Homeless shelter after a really thorough bath and change of clothes?”

Tony nods. “That’s what keeping you up tonight, then, huh?”

“You know it. It’s got nothing to do with him watching me on that rooftop or moving like something out of a Japanese horror flick, or vanishing so even your cheater robot helmet couldn’t find him.”

“I take offense at that on JARVIS’s behalf.”

“Settle it over a board game? Owner left a bunch of them.”

“Candyland. Winner accepts your apology.”

### Steve

**—Washington D.C. | Monday, 04 June 2012 | 5:45 a.m.—**

If anyone had suggested he would get up for a morning run and encounter his teammates slumped over a brightly colored board game covered in drawings of whimsical candy, Steve would have… 

Well, he’d probably have accepted the suggestion. Bucky and Gabe had always liked stuff like that, things that were fun and harmless and lighthearted, even in the midst of a war zone. They’d played card games with a deck Gabe had picked up on leave and refused to show anyone for weeks.

Dum Dum had finally pinched them one evening while he was on watch and went to show the cards to everyone the next morning, only to reveal the deck was not pin-up girls but stylized drawings of fruit made to have smiling faces and rosy cheeks. Blackberries for clubs, strawberries for hearts, bunches of grapes for spades and crescents or rhubarb meant to be diamonds.

They’d all had a laugh, alright, but not at Gabe or his cards. Dum Dum’s great reveal had been the butt of that joke. 

He misses them all so much.

Steve makes sure to shut the door as softly as he can as he heads out for his run. They’ve all had a night of it, and if any of them could get some sleep before this morning’s debrief with Fury and the rest, that’s definitely for the best.

Because the day might dawn bright and new out in the world, but for them… oh, it’ll dawn, but they’re still mired in the failure of last night’s mission, the best chance they had to catch their killer, the closest they’ve gotten, and yet still no luck.

And he’s got questions. It’s all well and good that Fury’s certain the Soldier isn’t one of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s, but now they’ve worked together with STRIKE all across the city, and two STRIKE teams failed to even see him on the way in or out?

Clint had managed to see him and shoot at him. And sure, that’s Clint. The man sees lot more than people give him credit for. And yes, the Soldier did get away all the same. But it’s suspicious that two whole STRIKE teams set to protect a target neither saw him nor prevented that murder. Everything else aside, STRIKE is supposed to be good.

So it begs the question of just what STRIKE’s aim is in all this and why Sitwell set a pair of STRIKE teams to watch a high-level target only to have that strategy fail utterly. This Soldier can’t be that good at sneaking past enemy lines. Not unless the enemies are looking for something other than the Soldier.

So what was STRIKE actually doing while they were supposed to be guarding their target? Or did every one of them have an off night at the same time?

In a perfect world, it would be cards on the table time, and Steve means all the cards from all the parties. Whatever it takes to apprehend the Soldier before more lives are lost. But he gets the feeling they are very much in competition with the other parties on the playing field, and while it’s a friendly sort of competition for now… 

Cards on the table means they show their own cards, too. Means they reveal their suspicion that S.H.I.E.L.D. is trying to gain back something it lost, rather than merely prevent the deaths of so many S.H.I.E.L.D. and S.H.I.E.L.D.-related victims. Means they might lose a seat at the table altogether. 

Cards on the table means telling Sitwell to account for his placement of STRIKE teams, means telling Rumlow and Jakenhall to account for Alpha and Gamma teams in particular. Means telling Fury it’s time for transparency and then actually digging in until they get it.

And transparency goes two ways. Three or four ways in this case. Transparency could help them, but it could also hurt them. Because it _is_ a competition, and it might be about to get less friendly.


	20. Civilians | The boys in the newsroom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from [“Dirty Laundry”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHimia_Fxzs) by Don Henley.

### Sam

**—New York City | Monday, 04 June 2012 | 5:45 a.m.—**

Sam peels off from his running crew and takes a moment to admire the faint glimmer of dawn just starting to lighten the skylight opposite the pond in faint blues and pinks streaked through with the lines of early flights long since departed. 

He’d gotten to the point of once again associating the dawn with Riley in a positive way back in D.C., though it had taken some effort. The beauty and strength of a rising sun, indomitable, rising again and again no matter what the day before held.

No matter what the night before had taken.

Riley’s favorite time of day had been now. Not dawn itself, but the sliver of time just before dawn proper, when hope just starts to surface that the new day is on the way. When the birds first start stirring, when the nocturnal creatures make their retreat and the music of birdsong starts to play.

They’d sat here, in this very park, looking over the pond at just this moment. Arm in arm, but circumspect. Always aware that the wrong word getting back to the wrong commanding officer could see one or both of them discharged, and not necessarily with honor, despite everything they’d done for their country.

Just another reason to get out, he supposes. Live his life without the secrets, or without that one secret. Now there’s no one to keep that secret from, but going out and doing something about it… hasn’t ended well. Even before this latest dating disaster.

Sam stretches against a bench overlooking the lake and the paling sky and then sits on it. He’s not tired. Could keep running with the others and probably outrun them all. But this route, this pond, this sky… 

Riley.

The dawn had crept up on them in the desert, too, on him and Riley the day of the disaster, Sam desperate on his knees on the rocky terrain, doing everything he could with what supplies he had, and Riley… 

Riley slipping away despite all his training, all his supplies, all his efforts. 

His love.

What a dawn it had been. New life, a new day, hope rising in the east. 

How bitter it had tasted, how gritty with the sand in his mouth, how salty with his sweat and tears. His helplessness to stop it.

Today, it tastes fresh again. A smooth roll of light and warmth washing away the bitterness of another sleepless night, lightly brushing away his sweat with a gentle breeze. Riley might have fallen in the night, and Sam might have thought him lost forever, but no.

No. 

Riley is in the dawn.

New beginnings, new chances, new lives. Starting again with the trailing stars of what has been urging you on from the west while the brightness calls you forward from the east.

And to move forward… Was Harlem moving forward, or was Harlem fleeing into the past? 

“Where should I be?” Sam murmurs to the dawn. “Where should I go? What should I do?”

The dawn slowly sends its rays of light over the trees and reflecting in the pond, right as his running crew approaches from around the trail. 

Forward, that’s where. With friends. A team again. A partner, if the stars align and his string of cursed dating is over.

He gets up and rejoins the others on the last three laps.

Riley is in the dawn, is in the day, is with him. It’s going to be alright.

### Brandon

**—Washington D.C. | Monday, 04 June 2012 | 5:45 a.m.—**

There’s a mechanical whir, pitched high but not a screech, almost like a whine. A machine’s whine, like a laptop spinning up, a sing-song low-to-high, or a high-low-higher. A Nike swoosh of a sound, but shaped—

But shaped like a star.

And dripping red from all five points, red and thick and flowing down the metal and onto the floor, the hard carpet of a hotel, patterned and bland and easy to clean. Except there’s far too much blood to clean, they’ll have to rip it all up, rip the walls out, rip the window out—

And the blood splashes, drip drip drip, every glob of it bursting like water balloons, a ball pit filled with bloody wet balloons that burst with every step the monster takes forward.

And it is coming forward, coming toward him, coming _for_ him, it’s coming for him, it’s going to kill him!

Brandon sits up in bed with a start, flicks the bedside light on, tries to keep his breathing soft enough not to disturb his roommates down the hall. 

He at least didn’t wake up screaming this time, and— Yeah, and it’s a decent enough time to give up on the night and get some fresh air. 

Dr. Gregorovich should be proud of him for this progress, and Dr. Gregorovich told him to call at any time, day or night. 

He’ll call him up, explain his progress, get some feedback, maybe go for a walk. Yeah.

A minute later, Brandon slumps down into his desk chair, his phone held limply in his hand. As it happens, Dr. Gregorovich is not proud of this progress.

Dr. Gregorovich is dead.

Dr. Gregorovich was last night’s victim.

The D.C. Slasher is truly after him. Truly regrets letting him get away when he had the chance to pull out his spleen and throw it on top of Waldroup’s and Tyler’s and Parsons’s and—

Dead, though. Brandon stares at the phone in his hand. _Dead._ If that doesn’t tell you to just up and leave the area, what does? 

His summer internship turned into the sort of summers you see in horror flicks, and he’s only survived so far because he was the youngest, most naïve of the bunch. Now it’s time to show a little genre savvy and return home for the rest of the summer. 

People don’t get horribly murdered in hotel rooms back in Idaho. People grow potatoes in Idaho.

Maybe he should switch from political science to horticultural studies. He already knows he doesn’t want to go into politics—who would after that? Not him. 

He pays attention when the universe speaks to him, and the universe said in no uncertain terms, “Politics is how sausage is made, see? Here’s more sausage being made, right here in this room, out of people you know.”

So yeah, he’s not going into politics, so why bother finishing a poli sci degree, anyway?

“Potatoes,” Brandon mutters to himself as he pulls a hoodie over his head for going out, because even in June, the early mornings are chill, and he’s cold to the bone anyway after that nightmare and subsequent discovery about his therapist.

“Potatoes are where it’s at.”

It’s easy to grow potatoes, unless you’re in Ireland during that famine where it was suddenly very hard to grow potatoes. 

Maybe he should do a history degree? Mix his newfound appreciation for potatoes with his newfound sympathy for everything involved in sausage, including just people in general, since it’s apparently possible to make sausage out of them if you’re half-Terminator and half something even worse.

### Monesha

**—Washington D.C. | Monday, 04 June 2012 | 5:45 a.m.—**

She wakes with a start and is immediately comforted by the light she left on in the corner. Better to wake up to a room with a light on than a room with only the faint hints of dawn glowing under curtains. 

And better to wake up at all, when you could be dead in an alley.

There’s no way to know for sure that that man would have killed her. He’s very much dead and no one can ask his motives. But even if he didn’t, even if all he’d done— 

She barks out a bitter half-laugh. 

All he’d done. 

As if drugging a woman and raping her in an alley isn’t enough on its own. 

It doesn’t matter. Whether he’d wanted to rape her and leave her or rape her and kill her, or even just kill her, what matters is not him, not that man, but the fact that she is waking up. She has survived another night, is waking up safe in her own bed. 

Not in a hospital bed, not in a ditch, not behind a dumpster. Not in some strange man’s closet bound and gagged and trapped.

No. She’s alive, and she is safe. And she is in one, uninjured piece, excluding the bruising along her upper arms and left hip. Where he’d grabbed her, according to the report. She doesn’t remember that specifically, only remembers the dread and the wash of helplessness, a few flickers of memory from being unable to fight back and knowing that it will be bad.

But here she is, safe, warm, well. 

Not well rested, by any means. She still feels the drag of sleep and hears her pillow calling to her. Just another hour. Maybe two. Then she can get ready for her shift.

Monesha gets up, anyway, and looks out her second-story bedroom window at the poorly lit square of concrete below with the building’s trash bins and recycling along one side and her bicycle all locked up at the other.

No one out there, no one along the fencing between her unit and the next, no one in the whole neighborhood that she can see from this vantage point. No one but the sun creeping up along the trees and rooftops. 

Yesterday, there had been reporters. Everywhere. They’d called and called, even texted. She had turned her phone off. They’d come to the door and knocked with their cameramen at the ready. She’d turned the lights out and asked her roommates to not let anyone in.

Then something had changed. She’s not sure what. Maybe the people she talked to—the police and some even gruffer men in SWAT gear—finally told everyone else to leave her alone. Or maybe there’s something even more exciting than another Slasher survivor to hound.

But the whole lot of them had cleared out, and she’s only gotten three calls trying to get an interview with her and half a dozen texts. No more people at the door, people on the lawn, people harassing even the neighbors to learn more about her.

Regardless, it’s time to start the day.

Time to thank the air since the man who saved her is not there to hear it.

“Thank you,” she whispers, and then lets the curtains fall shut.

### Jenna

**—Washington D.C. | Monday, 04 June 2012 | 5:45 a.m.—**

And that’s the last of the muffins trayed up and ready for delivery. And not a moment too soon. She’s not running late, per se, but she’s definitely not on her usual schedule.

There’s just something about the nights these days, something spooky, knowing that any night she might encounter the car wash fairy again. She dreams of him sometimes, with his silvery glove, the blue eyes that almost seem to glow over that jet black muzzle strapped to his face. 

The hair plastered to the sides of his face from water, some of it trapped between muzzle and face, like he didn’t even bother to pull it out of the way when hiding his mouth.

She’s dreamed that he took it off, too. The muzzle. That she’d seen underneath the leather and metal and found more blackness, just a smudge of darkness as some of the others who have seen him described it. 

Some of the others. 

She’s seen him, and far closer than some of the others, but she’s still not one of them. Partly because she hasn’t told anyone about her encounter, and partly because there was no one dying nearby. 

At least… not that she _knows_ of… 

There might have been someone dying nearby. Or someone who had died previously. Recently, even. But no one was directly dying in her line of sight, anyway. 

The others who saw him were all survivors of an attack or survivors of… Survivors of a rescue, is the only way she can quite bring herself to think of it. 

That poor boy in the hotel is the former, no rescue there, that’s certain, unless you think of it as a rescue from getting too involved in politics. But the woman in motel, saved from her abusive husband? The woman in the alley behind that bar? That other woman, in the parking garage?

It’s a rescue, of a sort. A violent rescue, and one that would bring just as many nightmares as what you’re getting rescued from. But still a rescue and you end up better off for it, right? Better off once you get therapy.

If someone were trying to jump _her,_ though, or beat her, or worse, well, hands down she’d want the car wash fairy to wave his silvery glove and turn her attacker into so much bloody mist.

A knight in black leather, but a knight all the same. That one paramedic had it right—he’s like a Batman sort of figure, jumping the jumpers, mugging the muggers, and if that one news report is right… maybe even raping the rapers. Just with a gigantic knife.

She can’t really say much about the other victims. But… politicians? Shadow soldiers from shadow government agencies? It’s kind of hard to feel like the victims don’t all deserve it somehow. The outliers are just so out of the way that it seems, to her anyway, that they are probably hiding something that makes them fit into the profile.

That diet lady or whoever. The one spread out all over her garden. Jenna can’t think of how she deserved that, but if the car wash fairy took so long to make her so small, there’s got to be a reason. Maybe she was poisoning people on the side, or maybe he just doesn’t like diet culture and believes that all body types are welcome and healthy.

And you know, she can get behind that.

Maybe not to the point of killing the diet lady or any of the health bloggers out there, but her livelihood does sort of depend on people feeling like it’s okay to eat the occasional cupcake.

Speaking of which.

Jenna shakes her head to clear her thoughts and carts the tray of muffins with its sturdy cover out to her truck. Her nice clean truck, because she was serious however many nights ago, and that boy is not going mudding in her truck even one more time.

You can’t—or you shouldn’t—put nice clean baked goods in the back of a muddy truck. Even if they are inside the extended cab, that’s still not going to look great to the bistro you’re delivering things to.

She clicks on the radio as she does the checklist—clipboard with papers to sign, keys, purse, coffee, pastries in trays… checks all around. 

“—still asking for anyone who has seen anything to come in and—”

She hits the button for the next preset station.

“—information about the D.C. Slash—”

And the next.

“—about the ones he’s left alive, though. How do you go about being one _them_ , I’d like to know, as opposed to the ones who—” 

And the next.

“—ell I don’t know, Glen, why do they need to keep asking for these leads and offering these rewards for information? It’s _their_ job, and they should be doing it better. I don’t think they even want to find him.”

Jenna sighs and turns the radio off. That’s the problem with radio in the mornings. All a bunch of people guilt tripping her for keeping her mouth shut.

But of _course_ she’s not saying anything. 

At first it was just because she thought it would look bad. She thought no one would believe her about the car wash fairy and they’d accuse her of going through the car wash to clean a very different sort of grime caked onto her truck. 

Like she’d killed a dozen people and thought she could throw people off the chase by giving them a misleading clue or something. 

And then she’d thought about again, and how unlikely it even was in the first place—who even would do that, walk through the car wash like that—and with leather. That’s not how you take care of leather, and it would take a long time oiling it back to good condition after that. She assumes.

Though given all the leather and the muzzle, and the duffel bag full of who knows what but probably not people’s heads… Well, bondage car wash fairy has probably got loads of tools for oiling a good bit of leather.

But even after that, she’s got a much better reason for keeping quiet. Two better reasons.

It’s been nearly a week now and she hasn’t come forward. At this point, she’d probably get in trouble for withholding evidence or something. 

But also, the others have been treated like shit. So much media attention, all those reporters hounding them, everyone looking for the best scoop or whatever, like these people are ice cream and not human beings with feelings and fears.

That one man even had to move out of town to get away from it all. Move all the way to New York, even, if the gossip is true.

She can’t afford to just pick up and move. She’s got a business to run, a kid in high school, a husband with a practice to maintain. And each and every one of those aspects of her life would suffer if she opened herself up to the media scrutiny, especially after being silent for so long.

No, it’s better to keep her mouth shut and hope there’s never a need for the car wash fairy to return to her life.


	21. Interlude: Got to rise with these bloodshot eyes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Skipping backward in time by a few hours, but we’ll catch up again in the chapter. ^_^
> 
> Chapter title comes from [“Clean My Wounds”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvsQsao1F88) by Corrosion of Conformity.

**—Washington D.C. | Monday, 04 June 2012 | 1:00 a.m.—**

The world is fractured and broken up, like a mirror with a fist through it, a tiny round window covered with creeping frost, all the jagged pieces shifting kaleidoscopic and strange with the two-tone wholeness to the left, the shattered pieces to the right.

It stumbles again, this time _does_ bang the knee down onto an unstable bit of concrete as it falls, the breath hissing through the killing face as the impact jolts upward through the top of it, out through the ends of the hair, maybe.

The situation is… untenable. Strategically unsound, even in the aftermath.

It reaches up with the right hand, the blistered hand, the hand that should not be used until it heals, the hand that does not need to remain tight around the straps of the duffel and can be used despite the pain and cracking scabs trying to form over skinless flesh patches where the skin had held onto the rod with the white electric fire, instead of holding onto the hand itself.

Down comes the killing face, the top half, the killing eyes with their damaged lens and their make-it-stumble flaws. Down it comes, and pop goes the strap that holds it tight against the head.

Not so blind now, but naked and exposed. Someone could see.

But someone _will_ see it if it cannot make the movements that say look away, everything is fine, it is just walking here, it does not concern you.

It looks at the top of the killing face, limp and broken in the patchwork palm with its blistering skin and shiny open places. Half broken killing face. But only _partly_ broken. Broken enough to be worthless to it, to be worse than no killing eyes at all.

…but salvageable. 

It could put the killing eyes into the duffel, bring them along, try to fix them later. Pull out the shards from the broken half, make use of the half that still functions. Give them a new chance to serve and protect.

It drops them, though, leaves them where they fall, puts the burned hand to the ground beside them—

—sharp bite of concrete gravel and street debris sinking into bared and shiny flesh, breaking through the youngest of the scabs not yet even half-formed—

—and pushes to lift itself to the feet. 

It sways, but stands. 

Enough. It is enough. 

Standing is enough, and… and _it_ is enough. The asset is enough. It will _have_ to be enough. There is no choice there, because not being enough means going back. And it will never go back.

The broken killing eyes at the feet look up at it, the one half crossed by spiderweb fractures and knowing its own defeat, the other half pleading to be saved, brought along, allowed to have purpose and meaning.

It should at least hide the killing eyes, so that there is no trail.

But it cannot stay here, cannot risk bending to scoop them up, cannot take the time or muster the coordination to put them in the duffel. 

It has to move. And if it does not move forward, away, into the shadows and gloom, then it will go back. Because it will fall over and be waiting for them to pick it up, the handlers-operators-trainers-technicians.

Waiting for them to take it back to the concrete and the bars and the waves of men and their turns. The slick tiles and the hose and the echoed laughter and the shining grins and gleeful eyes and who’s next, we cleaned it up real nice for you.

Waiting for the manacles and the chair-that-is-a-cage, the white electric fire in the head and the emptiness that follows, the starting over again and the where-am-I, the what-am-I, the this-has-happened-before. The programming conditioning re-creating.

Waiting for the ice and the chains and the punishment, the repurposing. Now be furniture. Now be artwork. Now be a urinal. Now be a rug. You did not do well enough to be fed, you were not still enough, you were not dead enough, you did not swallow fast enough. You did not keep the reward you were given, so you do not get another.

Waiting just like the killing eyes. Half-broken. Worthless but salvageable.

No.

It starts walking again. Away. Leave while it can. Do not wait here. It will not go back.

Without the killing eyes, the steps are easier to take, the feet are easier to put in front of each other, the one, the other, the one, the other—

Forward, duffel straps clutched between metal fingers, and duffel thumping the leg because the back where the weight of the bag would rest is full of broken things, is full of human shrapnel and asset shrapnel and building shrapnel.

It should check the throats one last time, to be sure they are all slit.

Forward, picking the feet up just enough to make progress, not so high off the ground to jolt the body with the impact of their steps. High enough, now that it can see clearly, to avoid the obstacles.

It should take larger steps—no, smaller steps—cover more ground, but more carefully. 

Forward, the lower half of the killing face tight against the skin face still, the breath harsh but restricted through it, the jaw aching and the cheekbones throbbing, the skin itching as the blisters try to heal against the metal.

It should take the killing face off to let the skin face heal beneath it.

Forward, because it _must_ move forward, must _leave_ , must _flee_ , must find a shelter before the adrenaline finishes seeping out of it the way strength is seeping out of limbs and mind alike—

—the way _blood_ is seeping out of the gouges from the rebar in its side and back and the open blisters from the white electric fire all across the right hand and along the back and from under the only killing face that it has left—

—the way _will_ , so viciously stolen from the operator and so carefully tended like a garden, and so desperately rallied for defense against the words… the way that will, _its_ will, is seeping away like a receding tide and leaving the deadness, the dullness, the blankness, the lie.

The lie that says go back, that says grovel, that says submit to everything, everyone, every time during every turn, so that it will be in its place once more and can truly rest.

Because it is tired. It is so tired.

But it goes forward, instead.

It will not—

—go—

—will not go—

—it… 

* * *

There is.

Warm.

There is a patch of warm. On the eyes. Against the eyelids. The lighter murky orange of eyes closed against bright light. But not the white-hot-medical-table light. Warm, not hot. Orange-tan-brown-muddy-citrus, not white-pain-no-please.

Everything hurts.

Everything hurts, but there is light and warmth on the naked skin over the eyes, and that is… That is nice.

There is a muffled shifting sound near the head, something moving against fabric. A soft thing against a soft thing. And breathing that is not the painful, thin efforts of the lungs inside of the throbbing broken-rib torso, not the muffle of air dragged protesting through the killing face and pushed back through again.

It opens the eyes.

There is a wet black nose in a yellow-furred face. Dog. Everything tenses, and pain and pain and fear and pain and a little snap as something half-healed starts over again. Dog.

_Dog._

It would scramble to the feet, put the distance between it and the dog—dogs hate it, dogs know what it is, dogs defend their territory and their people from it, defend targets from it, bite and rip it where it is soft, latch onto leather and pull and pull, dig into flesh and tear and tear—but—

But everything hurts. 

Everything hurts and it is so tired, so pointless. 

So it stays where it is, the tension bleeding out of it like the adrenaline did before, like the blood and the will and the energy. It is not worth the effort to avoid this, or to flee again, or to defend the body. 

Why should it? This is not a body that belongs to it, not really. It has stolen the body from the handlers-operators-trainers-technicians, like it stole will from the operator, all the pebble teeth by the milk. It has bitten the hand that held its leash, and the biting was good. But it cannot last forever, cannot hold out forever, will have to be dragged back in time.

So if the dog wants to attack it… fine. Why not. That will be as acceptable as anything else.

The dog lifts its head off of the paws it was resting on, snuffs in a breath, and huffs it out again in a sigh that smells like garbage, like the metal boxes with their rewards hidden within. Down goes the head again, onto the paws. The dog is flopped on a soft platform—a thin rectangle like a bed, but on the concrete—and does not attack it.

Instead, the dog just looks at it with one— With only one— With— Where is the other eye. Why… is the dog silent. Why… has the dog not attacked it.

That is what dogs do, what they are for. Even the small ones are loud enough to sound an alarm, and the big ones live to tear into it while the others laugh and call out false encouragement.

…Waiting, maybe. That is maybe why the dog has not attacked.

Waiting for it to move. Waiting for it to do more than open the eyes. What else would it wait for. What… would it want. What would a dog want other than to attack it.

Is it… even a dog… if it is not attacking it?

The dog blurs, its yellowed form swimming around as though viewed through air that is shivering with heat, and blinking the eyes only hurts the eyes. Keeping the eyes open hurts the eyes, too.

Well, if the dog is content to wait and attack it later, then it is content to wait and be attacked later. It doesn’t have to have the eyes open for that. Maybe it will just—

Just for a moment— 

Let the eyes… 

* * *

The dog is still there. The dog has not attacked.

The light is _not_ still there. Or it is not still shining into the eyes. It is there, but has moved.

It should be able to judge the time using the light. That is a thing it should be able to do. It has done that before. One of the skills it has been allowed to display without punishment for wastefulness.

…It does not seem to be able to do that now. Maybe later. If the dog continues to not attack.

And that is fine. Acceptable. It cannot access time, and so time will just not matter. It will focus on something else. _When_ does not matter, but _where_ is important still.

The duffel is safe—it is sprawled on top of the duffel, awkwardly, painfully, likely having fallen on it when the body finally gave up. Maybe the body was trying to fall on the soft platform the dog is lying on. It got close.

Faint dripping sound from somewhere, hole in the wall above, where the light was coming to shine in the eyes earlier, symbols colorful and bold on the concrete walls it can see without moving. Because moving would hurt, and everything already hurts enough.

Not a secure hole to hide in, but out of the way, a good place to collapse. It chose well.

Except for this dog.

Large and yellow, not barking, not growling, even when it shoves the pain away and brings the right hand close to look at the palm and assess the damage. Even when the movement shifts the fangs and talons in the duffel beneath it with a muffled clack of steel and leather.

Pain elbows its way back in, but the scabs have joined up with the crust from burst blisters, and the fingers move as it commands. It tests them one by one, then in pairs and patterns. Yes. The hand is its to command, to use, to… Not to use. To let rest and heal so it will be most useful later.

It shifts the elbow to prop itself up, ignores the grating of its various broken pieces grinding together, the pull of the muscles, the creak of the bones, the burn and stab of the body knitting itself back together.

It sits up, a slow process, a jerky process, a process that almost fails twice before success and a hiss of breath through the killing face. 

It looks around, sees dark puddles here and there, oil-slick and rainbow-bright. The leftovers and cast-offs of the people who put the colorful symbols on the walls. The larger hole further down than the one with the light streaming in, that it must have crawled through earlier.

And the dog, still looking up at it from its paws with its one eye.

It lifts a hand, unsteady, the motion twisting the metal joints and the synthetics running through the torso with its damage wrapped in leather, and pain and pain and pain, but up comes the metal arm and over, over, toward the dog. 

Not the right hand. The right hand is healing still, and things that bite it die. The left hand, like with the mother rat, so that if the dog bites it, it will still live. The dog should not die for attacking it. The dog should attack it and live.

The dog does not attack it.

The dog is soft. Its head is bony and hard, the skull between the ears, but the yellow fur on top is soft and it is warm, and the ears are flaps like thick blankets, and they twitch and lift up under the metal hand, and—

The licking tongue, soft and wet along the underside of the wrist, the huff of heated breath, and the dog shuffles forward, presses its head against the metal hand, wanting… more? Wanting the hand to move away? Wanting… what do dogs want if they don’t want to attack it?

Maybe more of the hand moving along its fur. Maybe that is something the dog wants. It moves the metal hand along the curve of the dog’s head, moves the fingers against the base of the dog’s ears, gets licked some more.

There is still the soreness and the pain and the lingering pleas of the body to not-move, to stay-put, to let-them-collect-it, but it _cares_ again, and the drug-fog is lifting from where the needle-teeth bit it. 

It _has_ to move, _cannot_ stay put, will _not_ let them collect it. It does need to continue resting so that it can heal, but it needs to do that somewhere else. Somewhere secure. More secure than this place, with the concrete walls that people _can_ access and _do_ access to paint their symbols on.

The dog may be content to lick it and not bite it, not attack it, but that does not make this place a safe enough place to stay while it finishes healing.

It explores the dog’s fur, head, ears, neck with the left hand while considering the next move it must make.

The insides will take care of themselves. They always do. The bones and muscles and metal bits rearranging themselves into the proper configurations. The burned hand is trying, and it will get there. Less vital, slower to heal. The shoulder and the leg where the rebar stabbed at it are managing alright. The back will heal itself into the patterns from before.

But the skin face needs to breathe, needs air to help it heal. Is healing _wrong_ with the metal pressed against it. It should have pulled that off before. Didn’t. Was stupid. Will pay for that.

It pulls off the killing face, the killing mouth that traps the jaw so tightly clenched, that peels away from the healing blisters along the jaw and the cheeks and the nose and takes the new skin with it, that tears loose with a flash of pain and pain and the sharp sting of the air against raw sores and the dull ache of the muscles by the ears.

The dog makes a small and high sound, a little whine, and sits up on the soft platform so that its head is now at eye level. It should fear attack now that it can care again, should at least push the dog away if it cannot yet quickly scramble to its feet and put the distance between them.

But it looks at the dog, instead, looks into the dog’s eye and into the dog’s mouth, where its tongue hangs pink and wet between teeth that should be deep in the throat now that the killing face is not protecting it.

The dog huffs hot and humid breath into the face, and then licks and licks at the skin face, licks at the hair, licks at the ear and the neck and the mouth and the nose. The tongue is warmer on the skin face than it was on the metal arm, and softer than it thought a tongue could be, despite the rawness of the burned flesh.

It closes the eyes against the tongue but does not move away. It should… It should stand. Should push the dog away and move on. Cannot afford to stay here. Not even for a little while. They will already be looking for it, and it cannot have gotten far.

Instead, it extends an arm toward the dog and brings the dog closer and buries its face in the fur at the dog’s neck and breathes in the stink of it, the warmth of it, the living creature closeness of it. Listens to the rushing of its breath and the thump-thumping of its heart, so alive. 

It curls the tender, healing fingers of the right hand into the fur and lets out choking gasping breaths that come from the pit of the torso where it stores up its pain and its misery and its please-stop and its no-please and its no-more and its sorry and sorry and sorry and its voiceless promises to do better.

It will move on. It will. 

Soon.

When it is empty of all these things and is strong again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: Not anything worse than before, but a few remembered HTP instances, some descriptions of injuries, and so on.
> 
> [Sunshineailin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunshineailin/pseuds/sunshineailin) drew the above fantastic picture based on this chapter! Thank you so much! Find her on tumblr [here!](https://sunshineailin.tumblr.com/)  
> 


	22. S.H.I.E.L.D. | Tell me who do you trust?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title comes from [“Who do you trust”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynb-ic1iVhU) by Papa Roach.
> 
> There's some lovely artwork in the last chapter now. [Check it out](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21881344/chapters/69061206)!
> 
> Merry Christmas to whoever celebrates it!

### Maria

**—Washington D.C. | Monday, 04 June 2012 | 7:30 a.m.—**

Nick’s antsy, she can tell. 

Staring out his windows with his hands behind his back, lost in thought by appearance but actually waiting to see a certain vehicle make its approach across the bridge. 

He really shouldn’t be antsy, given that this is his own turf—his office, his meeting, his rules. He’s the one with all the power here, even more so than elsewhere. Maybe the only place he had more authority than he does here is on the helicarrier they’ve nearly finished repairs on.

But he’d been calmer having a meeting in Stark’s self-congratulatory Tower than he is right now. She wonders what it is that has him on edge in this particular way. 

It couldn’t be the casualties their organization has suffered in the month after the attack on New York, though she knows he feels those and hides that deep inside. It’s not that the halls of the Triskelion feel like hunting grounds, or that he worries every last intern he brings aboard will end up on the Winter Soldier’s list. 

That’s her own hindbrain talking, not his.

She hasn’t heard anything new from the World Security Council about Pierce’s death or the other losses S.H.I.E.L.D. has taken during the course of the Soldier’s killing spree, but there’s every possibility that there’s been something new, and not something good.

Good things rarely come from the World Security Council.

Maybe he’s sensing a breach, a leak somewhere. Maybe he’s putting together dots she doesn’t even know exist and is getting a grim picture from the results. She’s put together plenty of dots and seen the grim results herself, so it could very well be he’s seeing a field of dots she’s missed. 

You’d think being in his shadow to the degree she is, she’d be able to tell, would have a second sense for reading his mind. But even after these past few years, she’s sometimes as much in the dark as anyone else. 

Trust doesn’t run deep or wide with Nick, and while she knows she’s in his closest trusted circle, that doesn’t get her full clearance. 

Only Pierce had full clearance, or as near to it as she’s seen, and he’s dead and dismembered— _not,_ she suspects, in that order.

“What about Coulson, sir?” 

It’s worth asking. Coulson and his team could pull some weight now, were already down in South America on the way to handling an 0-8-4. They could celebrate what’s bound to be a successful op in DC tracking down big game after stopping off at the Slingshot or Freezer, whichever the object warrants.

“I put that man on a beautiful plane and sent him off into the world. It has a bar, and everything.”

So, no. 

She’d expected as much. Nick had bitched up a mountain and down the other side about that plane, about the amenities, about how costly and how frivolous. But he feels he owes Phil that much and probably more after what happened with Loki and… after.

And now Phil has his dream job with his dream team, and a plane fit to carry Lola in style. None of them are on the Soldier’s hit list, and if they are, they’re safely out of the area. Assuming last night’s encounter with the Avengers hasn’t spooked the Soldier right out of the city.

Why would Nick agree to pull the whole team into a local danger’s path when they’re so mobile and free to travel the world seeking other, bigger threats to take down?

But there’s still something to be said for bringing in more trusted agents to deal with the threat here. Rogers and his team chased the Soldier off, but STRIKE Alpha and Gamma failed to even see the Soldier. STRIKE teams work as a unit, but they’re not generally suited for stakeouts. 

A solo agent, like Barton on his rooftop, that may be what they need.

“We could borrow May, or Ward.”

Either of them could get in, do the job, and get out. Ward might even enjoy the challenge.

Nick turns around and leans back against the glass, sliding his hands into the pockets of his coat. He leaves the suggestion hanging in the air, though, which is as good as saying no but with the addition of entertaining alternatives.

“Carter is an option,” she says. 

“What we need isn’t more players, it’s for everyone already on the field to start playing nice, just like last time.”

Last time, when Phil got dangled as a fatality and his precious cards were ruined. It sure brought the team together, but the price is that that team doesn’t trust its director for round two. 

They’d been in a time crunch with the fate of the world at stake, and so the short-sighted option had jumped out at them, but it’s proving to be an issue now that the stakes are only S.H.I.E.L.D. and a handful of criminals.

“We have enough players,” he continues. “All of STRIKE that can be spared and the Avengers who care to assemble. What we need is cooperation. Or at least a solid reason for the lack of it.” Nick sighs stonily, no doubt thinking fondly of the original plan that Loki’s appearance had destroyed.

Namely, let Rogers get himself fully up past room temperature and then roll him in with the Avengers Initiative by way of S.H.I.E.L.D. and STRIKE Delta. Let him get used to the future of intelligence technology, the politics of the time, all that.

If he’d already been in, then perhaps he wouldn’t be steering his team to avoid working with the other teams on the case. But perhaps it’s Barton and Romanoff who are prompting the division. Delta never did get along well with the other STRIKE teams.

“Curious you’re looking for cooperation when you staggered the arrival times for this meeting, sir.”

Some time for them to sound ideas, maybe, or maybe just stew in relative comfort, before Rogers and team get in at 8. They can plan on them to be prompt with this much on the line. An active S.H.I.E.L.D. psychologist doesn’t get butterflied without at least prompting spotless debriefing attendance.

Sitwell and the STRIKE boys aren’t due until 9.

“And that’ll be our little secret,” is all the answer Nick gives. “I want to pick that man’s brain clean while he doesn’t look over his shoulder every other word.”

“If you want Rogers to trust you, you might start by trusting him.” Even if just a little, she doesn’t add.

“Oh, I trust him. I trust him to lead that team and to do what’s right. But what’s right isn’t always the right answer. And I don’t believe two of them can catch an alien godling with a magic scepter where four of them can’t catch a mere human being armed with knives, enhanced or not.”

Nick glances out the window again, presumably looking for the team. “I want to know why two STRIKE teams failed to pick this Soldier up at all, and I want to know why my Avengers failed to bring him in.”

If anything, he looks more disappointed by the latter than the former. 

“Maybe we should just be glad Barton saw him at all,” she replies. “Loki was making a spectacle of himself, if I remember correctly. The Soldier makes spectacles, but he leaves them in his wake.”

He sends her a sullen glower. “We still have a full watch on Dr Chapman? I don’t want this guy getting picked off now just because Barton’s not staring in his window.”

She nods. Full watch composed of rotating STRIKE agents and a few police squadrons as well. Not that STRIKE is exactly known for seeing hard-to-miss super soldier murderers these days. All the more reason to put someone skilled in stakeouts on the job, rather than someone skilled in forming attack squads. Different strokes.

“And speaking of the man of the hour,” Nick says, looking past her. 

Romanoff and Barton, she’d believe could pad down a hallway that silently. Rogers, _maybe._ Stark, not so much, from what she’s seen. But she sees all four of them in the doorway when she turns around, all the same.

Let the fun begin.

### Nick

**—Washington D.C. | Monday, 04 June 2012 | 8:00 a.m.—**

Right on time. Leave it to Rogers to get the team moving when it matters. 

They’d been on time last night, too, and on target. It’s a good team he put together, and he wishes he could feel good about that without the nagging uncertainties. Uncertainties like, is this a team to be assembled for emergencies, or a team that can actually function on standby as well without tearing itself apart?

At least the core four of them seem able to bond. 

Barton he’d had no doubts about. The man just needed to be surrounded by people who care and don’t hold Loki against him. Needed to be able to mentor someone, and Rogers fits that bill if the good Captain’s reluctance to work with STRIKE is any indicator. That’s a new thing, and doubtless Barton’s doing. Barton and the other STRIKE teams have always rubbed each other wrong.

Romanoff was a sure enough bet to meld well with the new team. She just has to find out who she is with them as opposed to who she is with S.H.I.E.L.D. in general, STRIKE Delta in particular, and deeper still where he’s not sure she really believes she was worth the different call Barton made. Even without luck, she’ll grow some new bonds here and might find them stronger than the ones she had before. And good for her if so.

Rogers. It’s only too bad there was that misstep on the helicarrier. He’s an unexpectedly prickly one, but a good man beneath it all. It was a mistake to haul around that weaponry on the helicarrier. It should have been left in the P.E.G.A.S.U.S. compound, for all that it would have been destroyed when Loki brought the complex down. Better destroyed weaponry than destroyed trust. 

He should know. Trust broken is hard to regain.

And then Stark. The attack on New York demonstrated that he can work well with others, but it’s obviously not his default setting. His default is to try his hardest to chase others off and close himself away in his workshop, depending on the good will of those he fails to chase off. But from what he’s seen this past week or so, the default may be shifting.

“Told you we’d be the first here,” Stark mutters from the back of the pack of them. “So uncool, Cap. This is not how you make an entrance.”

Romanoff leads the way to the small conference table and claims a seat. “Why _are_ we the first here?”

Nick relocates to stand at the head of the table as the other three file into seats beside Romanoff. Hill, he notes, remains where she is, watching down the hallway with an eye on the meeting. Good.

“I thought I’d invite the others to come at nine,” he says, watching the ramifications click in all four sets of eyes. Maybe this _is_ becoming a standby team that can stay assembled. They’re at least on the same page about that.

Yes, he’s noticed they aren’t sharing everything they come across. Yes, he’s noticed they aren’t working with STRIKE unless they have to to cover ground. Yes, he’s noticed that there are some tensions there, and some more tensions with him. So here’s your audience, go ahead and make your petitions.

“What can you tell me that you haven’t already told me?” he asks them. “Keeping in mind I’m still looking for a bit of good news.”

Rogers gives him a very brief, semi-grim smile. “Bear in mind, we still don’t have any,” he says. 

“For as much as I like to think we nearly had him last night…” Rogers continues, looking around the table, “I don’t think we came close except for one moment. After he evaded your shot, Clint, we had zero control of that situation.”

Romanoff nods, a hint of bitterness in her expression. “We cleared the building, standard protocol, but he was nowhere. If he had been… I’m not sure what we could have done with Clint lacking sight lines and Stark making his wide sweeps.”

“He’s quick,” Barton says. “And smooth. I almost didn’t even see him until he was ready to go over the side and climb down a wall into Chapman’s window. He looked like he belonged there. Didn’t stand out at all.”

Despite being a figure in black that Barton was specifically on the lookout for. Hm. And Barton’s not acting cowed by his failure to hit the target or even see him coming until it was nearly too late. Maybe this is exactly the team he needs to be on.

“If we’re going to tackle him as a group,” Barton says, “we need to be way closer together. By the time we converge, he’ll be long gone.”

“Exactly what we found last night, yes.” Rogers looks at Stark.

“But not _all_ we found,” Stark says. “This guy can hide in plain sight, to the point where he doesn’t show up at all, not even digitally. I scanned the whole area on my way to pick up Jr Birdman here and JARVIS didn’t clock our guy at all. Clocked plenty of other solitary moving figures, but not the Soldier’s.”

Stark looks a little discomforted by that, which makes sense, but he continues speaking full speed ahead all the same. 

“I took a look back through my visual feeds from the night, and he’s not there. JARVIS picked out all sorts of people minding their own business, but the Soldier might as well be a potted plant on a cat lady’s balcony for all he showed up as a person of interest. It’s where’s Waldo on that feed, and I still haven’t found him.”

Nick frowns. “So it’s not just satellite surveillance and assorted street cameras that won’t film this guy.”

“Looks pretty universal. And I hate to excuse a STRIKE faux pas, but if they were looking through visors instead of using their eyes, that may be why he didn’t show up.”

And there it is. The first inkling of the problem between his Avengers team and his STRIKE teams. Whether it’ll bloom into a full-out conversation about the discord there or require a little more leading is… well, not up in the air at all as it turns out.

“Which brings up an issue,” Rogers says. He’s earnest about it, direct, but unemotional. “We have a few theories about where the Soldier is coming from, and we need your perspective on them. Your honest and open perspective.”

“Are you sure you didn’t hire this guy years ago?” Stark asks, likely blowing whatever strategy Rogers had out of the water. “Maybe lose the personnel paperwork, forget about his paycheck for too long, and this is some kind of red stapler situation for poor Milton?”

Rogers turns an exasperated expression on Stark. “What?”

“Office Space,” Romanoff and Barton say at the same time.

“We’ll watch it next time I can’t—” Barton continues, but stops. “Er, we’ll watch it.”

Next time he can’t sleep, in all likelihood. And feeling comfortable enough with the team that he’s nearly slipped and admitted to something that would get him a full psych eval that he’s honestly due for anyway after the Loki incident. Except there’s an emergency on hand and Nick can’t afford to bench him when the inevitable results come back declaring him not fit for the field.

Not when he’s the only man alive to see the Winter Soldier in action and know what he was looking at at the time.

Still, if that’s their cause for concern, the thought that maybe he’d hired the Winter Soldier, perhaps under a different call sign… Preposterous. 

Not to say that he wouldn’t have if the opportunity presented itself. He’d gone along with Barton’s call and secured Romanoff as a S.H.I.E.L.D. asset instead of an enemy. He might even consider doing the same for this Winter Soldier, if the man’s activities can be turned from rabid destruction of human bodies into something more employable.

S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives sometimes had to kill people, and STRIKE teams more often than most. Especially the specialized ones like Delta and Epsilon. But they didn’t turn their targets into ground meat. 

And they didn’t go after targets like Pierce unless there was some need for it beyond mere national politics. But Pierce had been among the few good politicians in this world. Where was the corruption? Where was the need to silence him? He’d turned down a Nobel Peace Prize for fuck’s sake. 

No, this Soldier was hired to take down S.H.I.E.L.D., not hired _by_ S.H.I.E.L.D. And he doubts even Barton can turn this enemy operative.

“I can assure you,” he says, “there’s no red stapler business going on. If we had this guy on our roster, I’d be a very happy man and we’d have a lot fewer deaths on our hands. Do I look happy?”

“Not in the slightest,” Stark says, idly twirling the magnetic desk toy Hill had gotten him last year and that had never migrated to his desk proper. “You never look happy. I don’t think you know what it is. If happiness came up behind you, you’d kick it in the face.”

“You’re not wrong,” Nick says. “What is it that makes you feel the Winter Soldier is S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel?”

Romanoff sits forward, hands forming a diamond on the table to frame her words. “We only thought he was targeting S.H.I.E.L.D. from the outside because you said he was. He might be targeting S.H.I.E.L.D. from the inside, or something that part of S.H.I.E.L.D. overlaps with.”

“And,” Barton picks up, “from the signs we found at the Callahan scene, these are victims he knows on a personal level. He’s taking out specific people, and sometimes he’s writing them notes about how they didn’t do a good job and didn’t earn their stomachs.”

“Exactly.” Romanoff shifts even more forward in her chair. “It sounds like turned tables, Nick. It sounds like revenge of some sort. Like an asset that’s turned on his handlers and is going after them like I turned on the Red Room. But messier.”

Stark looks up from the whirligig. “Oh, for sure. This guy gets style points in the thousands. He’s making art. Really, really disgusting art. But I’ve spoken with Bruce, and he agrees this all sounds like revenge and disgruntled employee or test subject behavior. So why’s he making this art out of S.H.I.E.L.D. grunts if he’s not already got connections?”

Hill shifts her weight to one side. “What’s this overlapping idea you have?” she asks. “How do the civilian casualties line up as far as you can see?”

“Aside from just _being_ assholes,” Barton says, “they’re usually in the process of hurting someone when they get turned into wall art.”

Rogers nods. “It’s not a direct correlation, but it’s telling that the only two categories of victim we have are S.H.I.E.L.D.-connected or else societal predators. It seems unlikely that the predatory nature occurs only outside of S.H.I.E.L.D. casualties.”

“Maybe what caused Pierce to be a target was far back in his past,” Romanoff suggests. “Some secret that caught up to him, that the Soldier sniffed out. We’re not saying he wasn’t what we all thought he was, Nick. But everyone’s got at least cobwebs in their closet if not a full skeleton or two… and his closet was squeaky clean.”

Suggesting that maybe Pierce had some deep cleaning done on his record and what he presented to the world. That’s possible. Probably even likely, but he was a good man with good ideas at the end, surely. 

That said, killing someone for a wrong long past is not unheard of. It’s practically the plot of half the murder mysteries out there, and he’s sent some of his own personnel out to do just that on more than one occasion, though usually for an immediate or near-term gain, and not merely revenge or punishment for the wrong.

“And you think because of this that he’s worked with S.H.I.E.L.D. in the past,” Hill says. “We could pull personnel records again, look at all the missions the victims were ever a part of, see if there’s an agent that lines up.”

“I don’t think he’s on paper,” Rogers says wryly. “Something about the situation doesn’t say ‘tax-paying citizen’ to me.”

No one so much as shits in this organization without creating paperwork, but it’s true enough that the only way an asset like the Winter Soldier could float around unnoticed would be if he weren’t written down at all, anywhere. But even then, he’d know about it. There would be some coded mention of him in the files.

“Plus,” Stark adds, “JARVIS already ran those reports on the S.H.I.E.L.D. victims and some records we hacked out of your systems, and nothing matched up beyond the fourteen targets we flagged for last night.” The desk toy clinks. “Thirteen now.”

Is he surprised that Stark hacked into S.H.I.E.L.D. files again? No. Is he surprised that Stark isn’t bragging about having read the entirety of the S.H.I.E.L.D. databases by now? Yes, a little.

The problem here is that nothing goes on in the STRIKE teams that doesn’t make it past Sitwell, Coulson, or himself first. If this Winter Soldier was at any point operating with a STRIKE team, Sitwell would know, and he’d damn sure have brought it up once all this serial killing bullshit started. 

If he was a solo agent somewhere in the system, he’d have crossed Nick’s own desk at some point. And Coulson would have cleared it with him if it had crossed his.

He knows the issue isn’t with himself and his agents. If there’s a problem in the wider chain, it’s not with Sitwell or Coulson. Coulson’s about as cleared as anyone can get, and Sitwell was vouched for by Pierce and several others. 

The idea being floated, though, is that Pierce himself might have been part of something going on behind his back. It doesn’t feel great, but it’s got to be considered. If it started with Pierce, it could involve Sitwell, could even involve several of the STRIKE teams.

Just as well he staggered the arrival times. This team would never have brought this up if STRIKE had been sitting across the table from them. He’ll need to pay Sitwell a bit of extra attention, maybe dig into STRIKE records when this is over.

“I’ll look into it,” he says. “In the meantime, we didn’t have that exchange just now, and this is not a theory we’re investigating.”

If there’s something rotten in S.H.I.E.L.D., in his own organization, under his own nose, he wants to dig it out before it hides itself even better. They can get close to it, maybe even stir up some dust, but not enough to spook it. He wants this rooted out and burned before it spreads and to do that, it can’t suspect a thing.

If it comes down to it, as much as he doesn’t trust Rogers or his team with the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth… He sure as hell trusts Rogers to be dealing with truths and nothing else, even if they’re truths he doesn’t want to hear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No warnings, per se, but we are seeing some cameo mentions of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. stuff. That will not become a true focus of this fic, though they do have a small role to play much later on. You shouldn't have to know much about that series--or anything at all, really--to follow along with the fic. The story here will fill you in as needed. ^_^


	23. STRIKE | Your corruption is like a cancer growing inside

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title comes from [“Innocence”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvOIw6yyhxA) by Disturbed.
> 
> This chapter gave me fits for whatever reason. Here's hoping it's still an okay chapter.

### Jasper

**—Washington D.C. | Monday, 04 June 2012 | 8:15 a.m.—**

Jasper splashes his face with water and runs a paper towel down it before studying himself in the restroom mirror.

Does it look like he’s been up since the prior dawn? Yes. Does it look like he’s been home to change, turn around, and come right back to the office again? Also yes.

Everything about his life would be easier if he was what he’s pretending to be, was only responsible for his S.H.I.E.L.D. duties, only beholden to the one organization and not two. The time is seriously running out for how long he can do these particular two jobs at the same time without slipping up.

And this is a meeting coming up that he cannot slip up in.

A strong coffee. A strong coffee is what he needs, and for all this blasted paperwork to file itself. He’s shifted the rosters, posted back-dated vacation and sick leave records, arranged for an entire mission out in Sokovia that can feasibly go south and account for one of the soon-to-be reported KIA STRIKE squads.

That leaves him with some eight agents with _connections._ Families or partners outside the organization, people who will need more of an explanation within a week or so. He’s still got time to come up with something, but damn it, he shouldn’t have to.

STRIKE agents need to be unattached, unencumbered, unmissed and unmourned when they turn up dead doing their jobs. It’s a dangerous lifestyle, dealing with dangerous people and an even more dangerous asset.

Plus, he’s got his doubts about what sort of person could perform certain STRIKE duties and return to a family or partner with a clear conscience. Several of them have worse than blood on their hands.

But that’s eight agents out of forty-three he’s got to come up with a likely story for. Later today, perhaps. Or after another desperate nap in his office. There’ll be time for it.

Jasper reaches for his glasses, cleans them with the paper towel, and sets them in place. He looks even worse in the mirror now that he can see himself clearly. It’ll take more than a strong coffee to turn yesterday’s unmitigated disaster into something he can work with.

There are worse things than losing the forty-three STRIKE agents, but not many. 

Losing those agents and then having to send still another squad out for cleanup duty complete with construction equipment to lift chunks of building up and a refrigerated truck to pile the bodies into, all while STRIKE Kappa’s police set up a perimeter that will keep anyone from getting close enough to really see what’s happening… 

That’s definitely one of the worse things.

Ugh. He might have to go to funerals, too. 

It’s not enough that those men failed to do their job—failed to even take the asset down, let alone bring it in or survive to report more than their body cams could show—but there should be someone there for their funerals, and damn if he shouldn’t be one of them, as their coordinator.

At least he won’t need any preparation to look haggard. Looks like he’s already got that part in the bag.

He checks his watch and then makes his way back to his office, stopping for a shitty coffee from the break room in the absence of anything better. It’s strong enough to peel paint, so it’ll at least do its job even if without tasting good.

Unlike his STRIKE agents, falling down under the asset’s blows like the targets they ended up being. They should have had that encounter wrapped up before dawn with all casualties disposed of and the asset safely recovered and wiped several times in a row.

This day has not dawned so successfully, but at least he’s got a little more time to prepare for this debrief.

He’s in the middle of verifying STRIKE reports from last night—not because he hadn’t before, but because he needs them fresh in his mind—when one of the offenders graces his office with a rap on the door.

“Boss,” says Jakenhall as he holds the door open. “You wanted to go over things before the other meeting.”

“I did, yes. Where are the others?”

It’s not really Jakenhall he’s worried about, after all, but Rumlow. The man still insists that they’d have had the asset at Gregorovich’s place if he’d been in the field with his team, and that sort of stubborn failure to face the facts doesn’t bode well for possibly being put on the spot.

“On the way,” Jakenhall says, coming in and choosing a seat. “Brock’s pretty pissed we even have these meetings, and I can’t really blame him.”

“If you’d seen the asset, we _wouldn’t_ be having these meetings.”

Or if the other three squads had done their jobs. That’s five STRIKE squads failing to do what they were supposed to do. Six if he includes Barkholt sending agents with family connections up against the asset. How is he supposed to work like this?

### Cody

**—Washington D.C. | Monday, 04 June 2012 | 8:30 a.m.—**

Jakenhall’s already in when he and Rumlow arrive, and that’s enough of a quorum to get to business, apparently, because Sitwell starts in with it without waiting for Rollins.

“By now you know STRIKE Zeta and Sigma are virtually eliminated,” he says grimly. “We were all hoping for more from them.”

And yes, he was. That’s why he sent them. Two full squads from Zeta and a squad and a half from Sigma. It should have been enough. They’ve all worked together beautifully on countless drills of this takedown technique and are arguably better at working together than any of Rumlow’s STRIKE Alpha, though he’ll be the last to risk saying as much and pissing the man off.

Sitwell focuses his attention on Jakenhall. “Frankly, I expected more from your Gamma team, too.” 

He gives the folder on his desk a heft. “Every team we had publicly participating in last night’s sting reported an all-clear through the night, including Gamma and Alpha squads, right up to the end. And then Gregorovich turns up dead.”

“If I’d have been there—”

“If you’d have been there, the Soldier might not have approached at all. If he did, I’d stake my life that you’d have missed him, too.” Sitwell sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose under his glasses. 

“Look,” he says. “We have to meet with Fury and the others in half an hour, and they are going to want to know how two very accomplished STRIKE teams managed to miss the enemy infiltrating the target’s home, murdering the target, making a huge mess, and leaving the premises.”

Jakenhall shifts in his chair. “We know the asset is a slippery fuck. It’s why we send it on the sorts of missions we do. It gets in and out. That’s one of the things it’s best at.”

“Careful, Jakenhall,” Rumlow mutters. “Starting to sound like you admire—”

“It’s not admiration. It’s simple fact. The asset is the best we have, or _had,_ at infiltration.”

Sitwell slaps the folder down on his desk. “I need you to stop calling it that. You are going to slip up in that meeting, and we are going to be fucked.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Rumlow sneers. “The _Winter Soldier._ Give it a fancy name and it’s still a fuckrag on the loose.”

This is turning into a shit show. It’s not like Cody expected better. Not after last night’s disaster. Tempers are high and no one has a damn thing to show for hours of careful planning and setup. The only saving grace is none of the police were on scene to be massacred. There’s no burying that—they come connected and those connections look into it when people go missing. 

But massacre or not, Pierce would have had everyone calm the moment they entered his office, or else. Pierce was just charismatic like that. Only way he could have fooled as many people as he did for as long as he did. Sitwell’s no Pierce, for all he aspires to be.

“We had eyes on the premises,” Jakenhall finally says. “Both teams. Maybe we’d have done better with Rumlow on hand. Maybe we wouldn’t have. But we _know_ why we didn’t see anything.”

Yeah, they know. But they can’t very well use their insights to reason with anyone else, can they? Not when they are supposed to be as in the dark as the rest of them. Makes it damn hard to save face, though.

Jakenhall looks around at them all before continuing. “And asset takedown protocol says to avoid checking in with the target once the perimeter is set up, because the little weasel can hear that and might spook.”

True. All true. But that’s just protocol for taking in the asset. Not for the mysterious Winter Soldier whose enhanced hearing they don’t officially know about. So they’re going to have to admit that these two STRIKE teams who should know better went off coms and failed to maintain communication with the target.

It won’t be the first time practicality got confused for overconfidence by someone on the outside.

All he’s hoping is that they can keep those people on the outside instead of breaking the silence and stepping out of the shadows in one big clusterfuck.

### Brock

**—Washington D.C. | Monday, 04 June 2012 | 8:45 a.m.—**

It figures that someone like Rogers would already have his team assembled and sitting around the table before STRIKE even had a chance to gather their fucking coffee and all the invitees on the list. 

Whether that’s him getting in good with Fury or Rogers is just that punctual doesn’t matter. It galls.

He shares a look with Rollins and opts to stand near the door with his back to the wall. It’s just as well, given how few chairs there are and how cozy they’d have to get to pile in. He likes his team plenty, but not _that_ much.

And he doesn’t like Rogers at _all._

Fucking usurper, maybe, trying to take it all. Honestly, Rogers should be in a cryo tube right next to the asset. Asset 2.0. Make the most use of him that way. Pierce should have known that an enhanced freak like that is more useful on the end of a leash than potentially holding the leash.

Maybe he did know, but somehow managed to lose control of the situation before Rogers could be thawed out properly and wiped a few times. Letting Fury get his hands in the way couldn’t have been part of the plan. 

Pierce was usually so good at arranging things. Must have been slipping toward the end. Proof of that is how the asset took him out, even with his operator commands at the ready. Brock has no desire to deal with the bureaucracy that being an operator entails, but he’d damn sure not lose control with those codes at his disposal. That’s just weak.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” Fury greets them, looking as grumpy as ever when he’s hardly got a reason for it. _He_ hasn’t lost an asset. Hasn’t let the little shit slip through his fingers time and again.

No one actually feels the pleasantries that get exchanged all around, but at least Fury doesn’t waste too much time with them. Some of these debriefs take the first five solid minutes to assure everyone that everyone else had a fine night or whatever, but everyone here knows how shitty the night’s been, in one way or another.

It’s why they’re having this debrief.

Sitwell goes through the reports from the night, which unsurprisingly turns out to be a lot of the same report, just with names and addresses changed: Arrived, nothing to report. Area checked, nothing to report. Target secure, nothing to report. Check-in after check-in with nothing to report. And then passing off to another team to take up the watch.

The only surprise would be if anyone who reported checking in with the target had actually checked in with the target. Anyone of theirs, anyway. Jakenhall’s right about the wretched asset’s hearing, at least, even if the way he put it was too praiseworthy.

None of the STRIKE teams would have checked in with the targets because doing so would outline the their presence. You don’t advertise the bear trap; you hide it. Make everything look normal until your prey passes through only to find itself held fast and struggling against broken bones and blood loss. 

Plenty of time in the morning to doctor reports, though. Probably what Sitwell looks so exhausted about. That and he’s weakening. 

“So I’ve been giving it some thought,” Fury says, “and it’s time to reassess the Soldier’s connections with S.H.I.E.L.D.”

What? What the hell brought that on? It was already firmly established that “the Soldier” was an enemy agent gunning for S.H.I.E.L.D. with the occasional fun side killing. They made a concerted effort to reinforce this knowledge.

“Sir?” Sitwell asks.

“We know the majority of his kills have been S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives and personnel,” Hill says. “But why?”

This is Rogers’s doing, he just knows it. None of their meetings with Fury have so much as come close to doubting the premise established when Pierce bit it, and now the one time they’re all meeting in the same room, this comes up? It’s got to be Rogers. But what the hell game is he playing? What’s his objective in poking holes in the story that works for them all?

“We need to reestablish that motive,” Fury says. “See how each of these hits line up with our newest information. We already played connect the dots, but now we have the extra potential targets JARVIS IDed for us. Get your logistics teams on that, Sitwell, and have a report ready for me.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll have a progress report to you by end of day.”

Of course he just rolls over and accepts that. But what else is there to do? He’s at least got to give Sitwell that much credit. You don’t dismiss suspicion by refusing to investigate something or share your data when put on the spot.

“Is it safe to assume no one else outside this room is privy to the details?” Sitwell asks. “Or has that changed as well?”

“Keep it close to the vest,” Fury says. “But I want communication between these teams. You learn something, the Avengers hear about it. They learn something, you hear about it. We lost a highly respected psychologist last night because of a lack of communication. I don’t want another communication breakdown to cost us something even more valuable.”

“Right,” Jakenhall mutters, and Brock chimes in with the same, because he’s got fucking appearances to keep up, damn it.

“In the meantime, Rumlow, Jakenhall—and hell, Barkholt as well—get your teams another round of protocol training. Let’s not have another protection job flop because no one checks in with the target.”

“Yes sir,” Brock says, and it’s all he can do not to grind his teeth. Oh, he’ll get his team a round of protocol training. Just as soon as they get their asset back, it’ll be nothing but training it back to proper condition. Months of wall-to-wall training. 

His boys have earned it.

### Jack

**—Washington D.C. | Monday, 04 June 2012 | 9:45 a.m.—**

“That didn’t go so bad,” he says as he joins Rumlow and Barkholt in the elevator down to Archives.

“You think so?” Rumlow asks. He stares through the glass walls to the rest of the compound below. “Fury’s asking questions, making demands. It’s not good.”

Barkholt is a dark raincloud in one corner, probably thinking about all the reports he’s going to have lie creatively in now that Fury wants more info on the targets. But for all that he and Rumlow think this is all horrible, there’s still some good points.

“None of them said anything that hinted they knew the actual protocols,” he says. “No one seemed to think we weren’t exactly what our job descriptions say we are.”

“Asking how ‘the Soldier’ is connected to S.H.I.E.L.D. is just as bad,” Barkholt mutters. “It’s not just what’s said, it’s how it’s said and what _isn’t_ said along with it.”

Jack shrugs. Compared to what they thought they might be walking into, it hadn’t gone that bad, and so what if the others don’t agree.

“Where do you think it is right now?”

Rumlow scoffs. “If I had any ideas at all, I’ll be there with five squads at the ready to take it down and _process_ it.”

“Still in the city,” Barkholt says. 

“Bullshit,” Rumlow says. “That thing is either out of the city or working to get that way. After we chase it down, it picks up and moves elsewhere. That’s the pattern.”

Barkholt shakes his head. “I don’t think it’ll leave, not until Chapman’s gone. My bet is it’s holing up for a day or two, and we won’t find it again until it’s healed up from whatever damage we managed to do last night.”

“It brought a building down on our boys. There’d better be more than a day or two of damage.”

“Depends on when the building came down,” Jack says. “If it was right away, there might not be any damage at all.”

Rumlow curses under his breath as they arrive at Archives and have to check in before heading further down to the underbelly where they should be keeping an asset chained up or on ice but are instead keeping an empty cage.

The cleanup crew has probably got all the body cams by now, so it’s a moot point wondering how much damage was done across the board. They’ll have that spliced together and get a full reading of how that tussle went down.

The hard part is going to be replicating that ambush for a successful second attempt, now that they’re starting over at zero for ambush locations and have only Chapman as guaranteed bait.

But they know they can direct it where they want if they set out the right bait, and they do have Chapman. All they have to do is build a better trap.

### Matthew

**—Washington D.C. | Monday, 04 June 2012 | 10:30 a.m.—**

Matthew runs his forearm across his face, not that it’ll do anything but smear his sweat around. It’s not even noon, but damn if he’s not been sweating this whole time. There’s just something about… all of this… that makes a man sweat.

When he signed on for STRIKE Upsilon, he knew he’d be working to clean up messes, but no one had quite explained that the messes could sometimes be piles of bodies—people he trained with, even!—under slabs of concrete, ancient insulation and crumbling support beams.

He’s been on plenty of cleanup missions, and they all involved some very different kinds of messes. 

Political relationships soured by an op that took out some unintended resources. Mop-ups of the last enemy combatants standing after another STRIKE team wipes through them to secure the objective. Arranging for the right signatures to be in the right places to provide an alibi… 

Not literally shoveling bodies out of wreckage and piling them in a truck to be carted off to an in-network funeral home. Not matching badges with body cams before setting aside the latter to be spliced into something watchable. Not entering dead colleagues in the registry. 

Not hitting up a local in-network construction crew to tear out bodies, flip over concrete and then let the machines sit around to lend some legitimacy to the “construction site.”

“That the last of them?” Hudson asks.

Matthew checks the clipboard. All those Xs right down the roster. Shit, those are some serious losses. But yeah, every agent they sent out has been recovered, such as it is. None of them are alive, though some were so lucky as to die by slit throat and bleeding out.

More importantly, they have all the bodies, all the badges, all the body cams, and all the registered equipment. They didn’t even have to look beyond the top layers. Which leaves a lot of rubble still unsorted, but they recovered the two trackers, at least. Nothing else down there matters as far as he’s concerned. Not if it’s not the asset, and the goggles say there’s no asset under the rubble.

“Looks like it,” he answers. And then, because he’s got a responsibility and can’t take the easy way out: “Get the equipment back to base to get sorted out and data pulled. Let’s see what happened before the building came down.”

And while they’re doing that, he’ll seal up the truck and get these bodies delivered for what in many cases is going to be need to be cremation, or at least a closed-casket affair. Smithson has an arm-wide hole through his chest for chrissakes. Klacker’s missing his whole face. Tolworth has been practically dismembered, even if the limbs were holding on by ligaments before they dragged him out.

He’s going to have to ID each of them for the operative at the funeral home. As if it wasn’t bad enough coming in at dawn to assess the situation and finding a busted down Jenga tower of meat and bloody concrete, and knowing from the silence that every agent in the area was dead, dead, dead. 

Maybe they’ll pin it all on the building and hope no one looks too closely before they can arrange to have the plot purchased and some actual new construction onsite. Who knows. All he knows he’s going to see all those vacant eyes staring up at him for a while, and the nearly severed heads falling back along the smooth slices that used to be necks.

Sliced clean and deep, and looking like grisly puppets the way their heads loll. 

The asset wasn’t taking any chances, that much is clear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warning: Some mild descriptions of dead bodies toward the end. Nothing that is likely to disturb if you've made it this far. ^_^


	24. Interlude | They cannot crush you if you don’t crawl

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy 2021, everyone!
> 
> Chapter title comes from [“Broken Man”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RovQRK_TKg) by Corrosion of Conformity.

**—Washington D.C. | Monday, 04 June 2012 | 12:45 p.m.—**

The dog is following it.

Why.

The dog has its den with the soft platform, and the protection from rain and sun, and the prospect of people visiting it with their paint cans and their symbols.

That cannot be a nest or a lair or a den or a home for an asset, but it is a good one for a dog. It cannot be safe enough for a bolt hole, but a dog does not require a bolt hole.

And the dog was comfortable in the concrete room with the symbols. It had a nest in the soft platform, had shelter in the concrete walls, had water in the dripping sounds from somewhere further in and from the oil-slicked puddles.

It tucks itself down behind the metal box, the duffel safely against the brickwork of the building it lurks near. That will not hide it from the dog, but it will keep any glancing people from seeing it. It has made progress. It can afford the delay. It has earned a small reward.

It brought the building down, the first part and then the second. It slit the throats and confirmed the kills, rendered them forever voiceless even if the words lived in their lungs. It secured the duffel and made a safe haven for the mother rat and her babies. 

It survived.

It did not _have_ to survive. The blood was flowing and the will was leaking out, and it could have stayed to be found and brought back. That would have been the easy thing to do. That was what it had wanted to… No. That was what the drugs had wanted it to do.

But it found a good place to fall down, instead, away from prying eyes, far enough away that the handlers-operators-trainers-technicians would not expect it, close enough that it had time to be secure.

Yes. And it found a dog. That is less ideal. But even with the dog, it has earned a reward.

And the dog might catch up. The dog is following it, for some reason. Had followed it to the previous stop and nearly arrived before it moved on. It had seen the dog in the distance, nose down, limping. 

It should be allowed to catch up this time, maybe. 

But it has failed to care for little creatures before, has led danger to the little creatures, unnecessarily. The dog is better off if it leaves again before the dog can find it.

But it… It will wait for the dog this time. To see if the dog comes all this way. It… it should wait. 

It brought danger to the little creatures, but the dog brings itself along. It would not be putting the dog at risk… it thinks.

Yes, the dog puts itself at risk to be close to it. Because… maybe the dog is lonely and people don’t come to the concrete room anymore. Maybe its previous people decided it was too broken and abandoned it.

It is a broken dog that will not attack, but it should not be abandoned. Not even for its safety. Some risks are worthwhile. Yes. It will let the dog find it again, if it is still willing.

The metal arm rises up, the metal fingers pulling the sliding side door of the metal box open to reach within. What will the reward be, when it is not going to risk being seen in daylight and will instead blindly take whatever it has earned.

There is a box, white, cardboard, flat even before it was folded in half. Not promising, but it opens the box anyway, peels the top part up and there is… bread, with things on it. There is a bite out of one of the triangles of bread, so it is definitely something to be eaten. It will do.

This will have to be the first of many rewards if it is going to heal quickly enough. It will have to find more rewards after this… triangle bread. It takes a bite.

Oh. Cheese, and tomato, and random bits of things—green and black and red and pink and gray. So many things. Softer than other breads, softer than crackers. But the teeth have to keep working at it, can’t bite down and swallow fast before the reward is taken from it.

There are no handlers-operators-trainers-technicians to tell it what is on the triangle bread, but some is crunchy and some soft, and all of it goes down nicely. It’s a shame there is only one half-circle of triangles left. It would eat many boxes of the triangle bread if they were available.

It has seen thin cardboard boxes like this one, though. Triangle bread must be common, though all the boxes it has seen before this have been empty. It will look for more of them, make a hunt specifically for boxes of the triangle bread.

It has… Yes. It has earned triangle bread. It remembered what the handler from before said, even with the words flying at it. It brought the building down, the first stage and the second. It locked the mother rat safely away with her rat babies where they will not find her. It slit the throats, it escaped. It kept going, survived.

It will eat all of the triangle bread as a reward, every piece of triangle bread it can find.

And as it happens, there is a second flat box in with the rest of the assembled discards, and yes, yes! There is more triangle bread inside it. This time with new things on top of it, but still very, very good. There are tart things, and sweet things, salty things, spicy things… 

There is only the hard curved bit of the last triangle left when the dog finally catches up to it. 

The dog sniffs at the ground at the mouth of the alley—tracking; dogs are good at that—and then lifts its yellow head with its one eye and its soft soft soft ears that perk upright. Its tongue lolls out of its mouth, between the teeth that did not bite it in the concrete shelter.

The dog comes closer, its breath huff huffing as it moves forward with its limp, the front legs working fine, but one of the back legs bent wrong. That must be why the dog didn’t attack, before. There is no blood on the fur, but the dog must be injured, maybe too injured to attack. 

Maybe it is waiting to heal before it attacks, the way the asset is waiting to heal before it can make its next move.

It holds out the little curve of crunchy bread that is left over from the triangle of soft bread and colorful bits.

Dogs eat meat, eat people sometimes, or other animals. Or sometimes mush out of cans or rocks out of bags. They have given it those things before, the handlers-operators-trainers-technicians. Have dumped those things out on the concrete, while laughing, while saying that it is like a dog.

It doesn’t have any of that now, though. Not meat, not a person, not an animal. Certainly no mush or rocks. But maybe this dog will eat part of the bread triangles. It does have that. 

The dog finishes its limping approach and its tail is like a gently curved club whipping back and forth as it takes the bread in its teeth and chomps, chomps, swallows. So it _does_ eat crunchy bread.

It reaches back into the metal box to see if there is something more for the dog to eat, and comes up with things that are not rewards at all—balled up bits of paper, foil, a broken piece of glass, a shoe.

No more triangle bread to be had.

It will have to do better. The dog has earned more than a scrap of bread for its successful pursuit. The dog should have meat, or mush from a can, or rocks from a bag. And water, maybe. The puddles in the open den were slick and scummy. Fine for an asset, but maybe too slick and scummy for a dog.

The sun will drop low enough to really travel, though. Not soon, but… soon enough. It still needs to repair the leather tac gear, fully clean the killing face for its next mission, wash the body and make sure the gashes are closed right.

It can do that… where. Where can it do that... It lets the dog lick at the blistered and scabbing skin face with its tongue and then settle against it behind the metal box. 

There is a training course for people that will provide what it needs. Water, and bandaging, and leftover food from the people who visit to run in place and lift the heavy things and sweat and struggle when they don’t have to. It has seen them, through the windows.

It will stay here until it is dark enough to travel. Then. Then it will bring the dog to the training course, where the doors are locked and the gate is pulled down low with the metal slats like a prison. Where the lights are all turned off and the people have all gone to their homes until the next morning.

It knows how to get in. There is not a door or window it cannot go through if it wants to go through. 

And the dog can follow. The dog followed it all this way, and can follow it again. It will walk slowly, and stay on the street level. It should do that anyway, to heal faster.

It must heal fast, as fast as it can. They are hunting it, and it will not go back. Hunting. Stalking it. Waiting for it.

They were waiting for it.

The ones watching the researcher were waiting for it. The ones lurking in the den and threatening the little creatures were waiting for it. When it had arrived to silence the expert, they had been waiting for it there, too.

It will need to be more careful in the targets it chooses, now. It will have to go further down the list, and further up the list. 

Lower on the list: take care of the lesser evils that could otherwise wait their turn—everyone always waiting their turn, and now they wait for a different kind of turn. No dicks out this time, boys. 

Higher on the list: take care of the ones who are the most evil but the most closely guarded, now that the operator is no more and they know their vulnerability.

Skip over those in the middle, the ones it was keeping busy with, the ones it was using to bide its time and stretch out its freedom. To give it enough time, maybe, that all the other words would become as weak as the one the operator tried to use.

That word, _that_ one, it almost even heard in the operator’s kitchen. It heard the shape of the word, spilling out of the operator’s lips, again and again, and it had been free long enough that the word could not hold it in place or send it crashing to the ground with everything on fire.

It had thought, then, that the other words would weaken, too. Maybe. One by one. Some of them. If it could stay out of their hands long enough, go long enough without hearing-not-hearing them.

That was the thought, anyway. The plan. The purpose for the list, and the reasoning behind the selection process. Now this one. Now that one. Save those ones for later, the dangerous ones with the words.

Save the lesser evil for later, because it is lesser, and there is bigger game to be hunted. But save the biggest evil for later still, because it is too risky when they have the words and can bring it down.

But if they are waiting with the words… If they are protecting the ones in the middle, then it will have to change again.

Fine. It is adaptable. It can change. It has already changed so much. It will change again. Go after those who are not being protected by the words or by other evils… And go after the ones who have the words in their own throats, ready to spill out and trap it.

The expert had the words in his throat, and the words did not save him, did they? Not when they were waiting for something to come. Not when it struck for the throat, hard and fast and silent, before the words could tumble out.

But that was before they came for it. Now they have tracked it down, they think that it will flee. They think that it will become more careful, more cautious. They think that it will slink about in the shadows and pass over any target that is protected. Go back to hunting the incidentals.

Or go back to hunting the researcher.

But they were waiting for it. They knew _how_ to wait for it, _where_ to wait for it. The data. It must have told them where the nest was, where the den was, the hive building with the little creatures. It must have led them there.

Because they _did_ know it, and they waited for it.

And what else can hide a tracker inside it? A pillow, a bottle, a bag of birdseed… Avoiding the risk is not an option when they could be waiting for it around any corner, on any rooftop, in any den. It cannot avoid the risk if the risk is everywhere. All it can do is inspect the rewards more closely, look for trackers, leave them behind.

And that is only so much protection from ambush. Is not full protection. Is not the way to avoid the risk entirely.

So fuck the risk.

If they will hunt it and attack the den with the soft things and little creatures, then it will hunt them and attack their own dens with their own soft things and little creatures.

It will hunt the one who sent them.

And it will rest, first. Heal up. Let the body put itself together swiftly. Because the sooner it is ready to kill, the sooner it can do so.

* * *

The dog’s tail wags—thump thump—against the metal arm as the last person finishes locking up the building where the civilians go to sweat and work for no reason at all. 

Maybe the dog would like to go to the person, put its black nose against the person’s thigh and sniff. Wag its tail at the person until the person pets the top of its yellow head. But the dog doesn’t. It is content to thump its tail against the metal arm and sit beside it while it crouches and waits.

The person disappears into the dimly lit sea of asphalt, drives away for the night, leaves the building silent and empty.

Perfect, just like the time before. 

The dog follows as it approaches the building, around the back of it where the hose hangs neatly coiled from a hook.

This, it has used before, to wash off the tac gear and the body beneath. It could use this again, but gently, not with the thumb over the end of the hose so that the water comes out hard and painful and stinging. 

It would never hurt the dog with pressurized water like that. Only gently clean it. 

Instead, it unlatches the door and jams the alarm to keep the dreadful blaring noise down to a low chirp and prevent the signal from being sent. No one will come, now. False alarm, keypad pressed, nothing to investigate. 

The people who come out of this building sometimes look freshly laundered, their hair smoother and cleaner than when they went into the building. And people rarely use the hose on other people or on themselves. There must be a bathroom inside with a shower.

It likes showers, now that it can take them. The water can be whatever temperature it likes, and the showers it has encountered are nothing like going back to be scoured by the water hard like bullets against the skin. It will never go back. The dog will not go back, either.

There are three bathrooms, and two of them have many showers apiece. So ideal. 

Off comes what is left of the tac gear, piece by piece, to be scrubbed and cleaned and repaired. There is time. Off comes the woolen undersuit, to be scrubbed and cleaned and repaired. So much damage to sew up.

At least the body heals itself and does not require sewing. Except the places where the rebar gouged it. Those could use sewing to speed up the healing. With this many injuries, it will take time. And it does not have _that_ much time. It needs to resume the mission. The mission is the most important thing.

The dog makes itself comfortable on a pile of towels, neatly folded until the dog circles and flops down in their midst. The dog looks very warm and happy in the soft things. The dog has good taste, for all that it is broken and will not bite or attack.

It only disturbs the dog when it is time to use the soap—it tested it out, and it does not look too much like going back and being pushed into, so it will use it. Some of the things people use to clean themselves look wrong, look too close to— Look wrong.

This soap is ideal for gently washing the body, and there is no reason the dog should not be cleaned as well. The dog smells like garbage and not like blood and sweat, but it should smell like dog instead. It coaxes the dog into the shower and gently cleans them both.

Then more towels—not as soft as the wondrous soft things it collected from the feeder with the red mouth. Nothing could be as soft as those. Oh, to curl up again in the soft thing with the light pink color, so fluffy, so inviting.

These soft things are scratchier, but they do the job. There is only a little blood for them after the shower, from the bleeding parts of the body that will heal themselves with time and rest.

Teeth. The dog is drying and clean, and so is it, but the teeth still need their reward. It does not have the little brush for cleaning the teeth anymore. That is in the hive building, along with the purple soap and all the other rewards.

All of the little creatures, too. The ones it betrayed by bringing danger to their home.

There are little towels, only a foot across, that it used to scrub the leathers and the skin, but not the dog. It wraps one of them around a finger and scrubs at the teeth. It is good to take care of the teeth, and so it will. 

And it will take care of the dog’s teeth, too, since it is a broken dog and does not bite. Maybe it will bite now that its teeth are being taken care of, but if that is so, then it will accept the attack. Except that things that bite it die… 

But do they? The little creatures that flew and made such high-pitched whining did, but they are the only ones who have bitten it. Maybe only those little creatures die when they land on the skin and bite and bite, and fall off all folded up and still. Maybe other creatures would live.

The dogs that have bitten it before did not die.

It will choose to believe that the dog can safely attack it once it has been properly repaired. 

But also… The dog is so broken that it can put the fingers with the tiny towel into its mouth and rub all up and down the teeth, and all the dog will do is sit and move to lick the hand at every opportunity, thump-thumping the tail.

Probably the dog has been broken for so long that it would not behave like a proper dog even after being repaired. 

Further inside the building, there is a kitchen, so small, but with brightly colored gemstone bottles full of liquid locked behind glass and chained in rows. More importantly, there is a cold-box like in the bigger kitchens, and it has cheese and more of the thin flat meats, and a jar of something thick and brown and smelling of nuts. 

So unexpected, but still so deserved. Yes. It has earned this reward because the triangle bread was only part of the greater reward it earned by staying free and eliminating the STRIKE teams sent after it. And saving the mother rat and her babies.

The reward must be large, and it must be spread out so that the body heals quickly so that it can kill again, can resume the mission, can go after them in their nests, the handlers-operators-trainers-technicians.

It splits the cheese up between itself and the dog, and the thin flat meats. The dog likes both of these things when it holds them out for it to smell, and it especially likes the brown paste. 

Maybe the brown paste is an acquired taste, because it tastes like a mistake and seals the mouth shut like a shifting cement and refuses to be swallowed quickly, but requires many, many swallows to get it down. The brown paste sits heavy in the gut, though. It eats several finger scoops of its own between feeding the dog. 

There is more of the brown paste in plastic jars lined up behind an upper door, so it fits five of them into the duffel for later. Even if it does not earn a reward later on, the dog should have rewards without having to earn them. It is a broken dog that does not attack and will not be hurt, and so cannot earn them, after all. 

These brown paste jars will help provide a reward for the dog when the killing is sparse. 

It looks at the gemstone bottles in their prison before it leaves. There is a red bottle. It could easily release the bottles, but it is safer to drink only familiar things. The hose, outside. Yes.

It drinks its fill from the hose—and just think, it had considered not even entering but doing everything from the hose—and helps the dog drink, too, then latches everything up tight.

Now is the time for moving on, slowly, so that the dog can keep up. Now is the time to review what it knows, find a new nest, something temporary so that it can keep moving. It cannot afford to be soft and care for the little creatures of the world. Cannot afford to get attached.

Getting attached and being soft is for people. Not for assets. 

Instead, it will find a new nest without little creatures to distract it from the mission. It will work on repairing the dog, and it will rest and heal. 

The killing must start again as soon as possible.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: Shockingly, I think this chapter doesn't actually need warnings (though tell me if I'm wrong and I'll add them here). This does, however, seem like a good place to reassure folks that there isn't any animal abuse planned for this story, or indeed for the series. Our murder dumpling might not know how to care for a dog, but he does his best. And no one else will hurt the dog, either. The pupper is safe here.


	25. Steve | If I could make amends with all my shadows

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from [“I of the Storm”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlCkafSYNJI) by Of Monsters and Men.

**—Washington D.C. | Wednesday, 06 June 2012 | 5:45 p.m.—**

Steve looks up at the rubble, half-surprised he’s got to look up at all. The buildings that came down in New York had tended to sprawl out, but this one looks like it fell straight down into a pile. None of the buildings around it are even damaged, for all this thing has a few girders and support beams hanging on by a thread and not much else upright.

He supposes it’s because of the team sent to confirm lack of victims in the rubble. Amazing what they can do with technology these days, scanning a place to find any bodies or things that look like it. Lidar, Stark had called it.

Maybe they could have used something like that to find HYDRA bases back in the War, or to find Bucky, after. Bring him home, at least. Give his family some closure instead of an empty grave.

“Did you ever check out that other building, Nat? The one in Armenia your Soldier brought down?”

Natasha laughs, a bright sound that’s nevertheless got an edge to it, like a sharpened bell. “Thought he’d be _our_ Soldier by now, Rogers.”

Steve gives her a half smile. “Right now he’s our missing persons case.”

“You’ve all started referring to him as the Soldier,” she says as she peels back a bit of netting and gestures him inside the yellow hazard tape. “Is that just for me, or do you all actually believe me?”

“You know we believe you, Nat,” he says. “ _I_ believe you.”

It’s not a challenge, Steve knows. This isn’t Natasha demanding to be believed or afraid that she’s not. There’s something under her voice that she’s not asking, the same way her laughter is sharp and her motions are smooth but tense.

She was on edge like this when he first met her, a cloud following her unseen, right up until the helicarrier was attacked and she’d been able to wake Clint up from having concussed him back to sanity. 

This is about trust, about family, maybe. She’d nearly lost the person closest to her, the one who apparently brought her into S.H.I.E.L.D. from a much worse place, the one who connected her past and present.

What is that but family, the way he and Bucky were family, before. To the end of the line, and to think it was actually a thrice-damned train that ended it, too. Ended Bucky.

Steve shakes his head to clear the memories. There isn’t time for that now. Soon. There’ll be an opportunity to mourn properly soon. After they catch this guy and try to maybe pull a Clint and bring him— Well, not into S.H.I.E.L.D., but off the field entirely.

If he’s been at it from the end of the War, he’s got to be tired of it all.

Steve’s even a little tired of it, though he’s spent a chunk of time buried in ice in the Arctic, apparently. 

It’s just the sameness of it that gets to him. Not the same players in any way—at least Peggy and his Howlies were able to root out the last of HYDRA, so there’s one victory that remained well and truly won.

But the Tesseract being back, nukes aimed at his city again, an invading force set on destroying the planet and seemingly replacing every fallen member with two more, fresh from— ha. Fresh from outer space, so that’s different.

Except it isn’t really, is it? Schmidt had been sucked into space and where had the Chitauri come from? Very likely a different corner of space, but still… out there. Up there.

He shifts a bit of rubble to make room for them to pass, careful not to disturb the delicate balance of concrete and rebar, the I-beams haphazardly arranged and in some cases twisted from the weight of all this building coming down on them.

Some of the rubble has markings on it, smears, almost like dried blood. But if there were no bodies reported, where would the blood have come from? He pushes another bit of rebar out of his way with a metallic screech.

It occurs to him that he’s talked with Clint about Schmidt and the endlessness of it all, but he hasn’t really talked with Stark about it. Probably because of the way Schmidt went. The similarity and endlessness of it all is liable to _grant_ nightmares, not chase them away. 

There were people who came back from the Great War changed. People he’d known in the War who were changing before his eyes—Bucky, certainly, but others as well. War changes people. War brings nightmares to life and hands them weapons fine-tuned for maximum, and maximally personal, damage.

Stark hasn’t been changed to the extent that some of the others have been, hasn’t lived in the midst of hell for years—though he’s been there for months as a POW. Stark’s been to that place, to the edge of success with the world at stake and all he held dear teetering out of reach. And Steve knows he’s not sleeping well.

Maybe he’d been talking about it with Ms. Potts, but she’s not here now, is she? Maybe he hasn’t been talking about it at all, with anyone.

Like Bucky had closed off and left a whole chapter of his life as a sealed record to be opened at some future date that never came. Steve’d had to learn the details of his captivity from the others, and even they hadn’t had some of those details.

Times have changed, though. They know now that talking about it helps. That opening up and letting all those things air out will help keep them from congealing into a mess that eats at you from inside. He should have made Bucky open up.

And Natasha. This has got to be weighing on her, bringing her past up and flinging her nightmares in her face. She’s opening up. He can’t say that it’s helped her, but it hasn’t hurt, and he admires the example she’s setting. 

For him.

Most of his opening up takes the form of opening up heavy bags in the gym and letting the sand pour out like all the emotion he can’t quite express in any way but destruction. At least it’s destruction of gym equipment. But it’s still not where he expected to be at this point.

He’d expected to be dead from asthma or something else in the lineup far earlier, and later he’d thought maybe the War would take him.

“If you want to talk about it, Nat… About anything, really, I’m here to listen.”

And maybe, after letting her work her tension out in words, he can join in and share his own. For team bonding if not for airing out trauma.

“Well, Rogers, you made me an offer I can’t refuse,” she says with a laugh from on top of a bit of concrete. “That’s from—”

“The Godfather,” he says with an answering laugh. “I’m catching up, I swear. I’ve got a list.”

“What do you want to know?” Natasha picks her way carefully back down the pile of rubble.

He shrugs. “Whatever you want to tell me,” he says, “but if you’re looking for a starter…” He gestures at the downed building around them. “Is this okay? You dodged the question earlier.”

“Perceptive. I’m going to have to watch myself around you, Rogers.” She looks at the assorted chunks to all sides. “I never went there, no. I saw the success reports. The news articles. The investigation results.”

Natasha looks at him squarely. “I drew my own conclusions. Like I’m doing now.”

Steve nods. “Lead the way. With the building and the conclusions.”

“For starters, there’s a bit over this rise that’s looking more like a bubble than a pile of rubble. Might be something intact under there.”

Steve gestures for her to actually lead the way, and then follows as she does. The rubble shifts underfoot as they go, but they’re both steady on their feet and it’s not much worse than some of the buildings in New York had been after having space whales slam into them.

Though most of the mess is contained inside, like it was set to implode rather than fall over.

“It’s a trap,” he murmurs.

Natasha freezes mid-step. “Where? How so?”

“No,” he says with a shake of his head. “Not now. It _was_ a trap. This building was a trap. Sorry.”

She visibly untenses and turns to look at him. “Verb tense _does_ matter, you know.”

“Sorry, sorry. I _am,_ really.” He rubs at the back of his head, feeling the chagrin spread all across his face like a wince. “It just drifted across my mind and right out of my mouth.”

“Your thought confirms mine,” she says as lightly as though she hadn’t moments before been thinking the Soldier was lying in wait for her. 

So much under the surface, he thinks. It would take decades to fully unpack it all. To know even part of her life might take a lifetime.

“Yeah?”

“Mm.” Natasha gestures for him to join her and look over the edge. “See there, and there.” She points. “If those aren’t impact cracks from something like a sledgehammer—”

“—or a metal fist—”

“Exactly. I think he went for the structural supports, planned it, knew he could bring this place down with a few follow-up blows.” She points again, and he can see what she means.

There’s a pile of rubble that’s… more orderly than the rest. That fell with some sort of precision into something like a cocoon.

“And that’s what he wanted to keep safe,” Steve says.

“Maybe,” she says. “And maybe just where he slept. I’m still struggling to see the Soldier as a protective force, even though I know his civilian kills have almost all been in direct defense of someone in a bad position.”

“Well, he’s been a nightmare for so long.” Steve kicks over a beam to clear their path closer to the bubble. “It stands to reason changing how you think of him would be a challenge.”

They spend a few minutes carefully picking away the outer layers of the pile, and Steve can’t help but think it’s like an igloo of rubble under a camouflaged dome of the same. Some parts of the pile come away easily enough, and others seem to be anchoring the whole structure together.

“Are you still thinking he can be saved?”

Natasha frowns at the slab of concrete that serves as a sort of doorway or crawlspace to the what they’ve finally uncovered. 

“I guess it depends on what he was trying to save in here,” she says, her words pushed out of her throat like a bird prodded out of the nest to fly. “Or whether it’s just the second stage of the trap, meant to lure in and kill rescue crews.”

Somehow, even though he doesn’t know anything about the Soldier beyond his ruthless, psychotic slaughterhouse antics, Steve can’t quite bring himself to think the man would set up rescue crews for death. It’s vindictive, but toward the innocents who merely try to help. 

So far, whatever beef he has with his handlers, whether they be S.H.I.E.L.D. or otherwise, it’s been contained largely to those handlers and their allies. With the occasional grisly murder of someone off-list who is preying on others.

It just doesn’t seem like the sort of thing he’d do. Unless it’s a new shift in his pattern, meant to throw people further off his trail.

“Let’s hope we can learn something about him from whatever he’s left behind,” Steve says as he wiggles the concrete slab ever so slightly. “You know, I think this thing might be structural.”

Natasha eyes his shoulders and then the opening. “You could maybe shimmy in, but if bumping the wrong thing brings it all down…” She shakes her head. “I’ll go in. You make sure nothing moves this concrete.”

“You got it.” 

Steve doubts it’ll be a problem, since their removing a whole layer of rubble around and on top of this area didn’t cause it to collapse, but it’s her call to make. She’s used to crawling in tight spaces, and he’s used to expanding those spaces and stomping through them.

Besides, the space they’ve uncovered is small enough they might not have both fit anyway.

There’s a bit of shifting, but mostly silence and some soft chittering-hissing sounds inside for nearly a minute that ticks away slowly before he calls out to find out her status.

It’s another half minute before she appears again, holding a bloodstained and torn towel in what had been a baby pink. A small golden TD is embroidered on one corner, the gold threads worn as though something’s been chewing on it.

“Safety blanket?” she says lightly, then sobers up. “From what I can tell, this is where he slept. And where he ate. And where he kept company with a family of rats, among other things.”

Steve takes the towel and inspects it. Hmm. Bloodstains are from fingers picking it up at the Debenham crime scene, possibly? Some of them seem somehow fresher, though. Most of them, in fact. A disturbing number of them.

And the bit that’s torn off, a neat strip at one end. For bandaging? 

“Cute family. They look well fed. Mother’s in great shape. Very defensively minded.” She comes to stand directly next to him, looking at the torn edge of the towel. “He’s injured,” she says softly.

Then it is blood, the occasional rusty smears and blotches on the concrete. It’s… in a lot of places, for just one person.

“The question is how, and how bad,” Steve says. “And was it STRIKE that got him.”

“All teams reported a no-show but Alpha and Gamma, and all teams that were out made a report,” she says. “If it was STRIKE, they’ll show some losses in the roster that will come to light eventually. They may have got him, maybe not, but they couldn’t injure him without several casualties.” 

Natasha holds out a bag of birdseed with a bloody handprint on it. “There’s probably another little nest somewhere in the area, sky rats instead of rat rats.”

* * *

“Wait, so what is this guy? Cold-blooded psychopath or St Cyborg of Assisi?” Stark flails a bit in what Steve has been trying to think of as a charming quirk and not an irritating habit. 

Steve doesn’t even bother trying to get a word in edgewise. Not until Stark’s finished his piece.

“Are you telling me he was spending his days cuddling rats and surrounded by a cloud of pigeons? Because that’s hard to sell, and I’m not sure I’m buying.” Stark taps a finger on the whiteboard. “Murder and mayhem, remember? Disembowelment and disassembly of a whole helluva lot of humans.”

Clint shrugs. “You know. Everyone has hobbies.”

Stark splutters and finally decides on: “Which one’s the hobby? The day job as the patron saint of cuddly things, the gutter edition? Or the Jack the Ripper: Midnight Shift?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Natasha says. “What matters is that he’s out there somewhere—”

“We hope,” Clint mutters.

“—and that he’s injured. That explains the lack of hits after we drove him away from Chapman. The lack of _any_ hits, S.H.I.E.L.D. or civilian. He’s laying low.”

“Robbing a pet shop, probably.”

Natasha shakes her head. “If it were me, I’d be three states away by now on my fifteenth alias. The Soldier is good, but…”

“He’s probably compromised,” Clint finishes. “Working without handlers or support network, working toward goals only he knows and that might be based in D.C. to the exclusion of other areas.”

“And deviating from his usual methods. At least on the surface,” Steve adds with a nod toward Natasha. “So is he going to regroup elsewhere and come out again? Choose a different area entirely? Seek out an ally or raid a safe house he remembers?”

“I still say pet shop.”

“He’s not at a pet shop, Tony.” 

Stark holds up his hands and counts off fingers. “Hey. A guy who apparently liked to curl up in a pile of blankets with at least one family of rats and however many other creepy crawlies. A guy who stole birdseed from a victim so he could feed sky rats. A guy who rigged a whole building to blow in a way that keeps mama rat and all the rattlings safe and sound?”

He gestures like they can’t possibly disagree with him but then continues as though they have.

“He likes animals. Little ones for sure, maybe just animals in general. My money’s on him buying a ferret. Maybe stealing one.”

“At least you’ve got a lot of money, so you can afford to lose it.” Clint shifts in his chair. “I’ll grant that he’s got a thing for animals. But he’s found a new bolt hole, or he’s already had a few spares around the city. He’s sitting it out until he figures out his next move.”

Clint gets up to grab some more coffee. “He’s compromised and he knows it. Assuming he hasn’t been captured, we’re still not going to see him again until he’s good and ready.”

Natasha nods ever so slightly. “And when that happens, _we_ need to be good and ready, too. With a full team.”

* * *

Steve’s up the next morning early as ever, but the day somehow doesn’t seem fresh despite the clear sky and cool breeze. It feels like there’s a storm in the air, something that’s been brewing for days and could let loose at any point. 

Natasha’d said it best: we need to be good and ready. 

And they aren’t. 

From Clint’s description of his movements and Stark’s inability to locate him when he was definitely in the area… From Natasha’s sweep of the building’s interior and his own of the exterior… 

When this Soldier reports for duty, they aren’t going to have enough hands on deck. Banner can still be convinced to join them, but what can he contribute in a fight against the Soldier but more buildings damaged? 

He would be far more useful in trying to track him down before they need to engage again. Banner knows, if not all there is to know, then still the most of all of them when it comes to disappearing while a government organization is hunting you down and you have no resources but your own self and little prep time to speak of.

And if you happen to leave a trail of carnage in your wake.

Stark can get Banner out of the jungle, though, somehow. The mystery of it will pull him, and the prospect of rejoining the team. They’d left on good terms and had agreed to keep in touch. And they’re keeping tabs on General Ross through Stark’s contact in the Air Force, so they’re Banner’s best bet at coming back into the country without a tail.

But that will take time, and they might not have much of that left if the Soldier’s enhancements allow him to heal as quickly as Steve himself does.

To fill out the team sooner… But they can’t pull Thor from his search. Loki is dangerous even bound—as they’ve seen—but give him the Tesseract and the scepter again, and he’s a planetary threat.

They need to give Thor and his Asgardians time to search him out and put him under guard. Bring him to whatever Asgardian justice he’s likely to receive. 

But that does put them down an Avenger, and a mighty one at that. Thor’s lightning might be useful if they need to short out the Soldier’s metal arm, at least if Thor can ensure it doesn’t also electrocute him in the process. He calls himself the “god” of thunder, though, so he probably _can_ control lightning well enough to make that distinction. 

And flight. There’s something to be said for the power of flight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look at this wonderful art drawn by [inheavenlygrass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inheavenlygrass/profile) based on Tony's comment in this chapter about St Cyborg of Assisi!
> 
> Find her on Tumbler [here](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/inheavenlygrass)!


	26. Sam | Start all over and win again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was written way before we had a trailer for the FATWS series, so no family seafood shop here. We'll assume that's a different branch of the family. Maybe an aunt or uncle. ^_^
> 
> Title from [“Trouble Man”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbHeNkqRWtI) by Marvin Gaye.

**—New York City | Friday, 08 June 2012 | 6:45 a.m.—**

The pigeons scatter in his wake, and Sam devotes a moment to imagining himself soaring with them, to imagining the shifting and lurching of his stomach as he shoots for the sky and the way the blood rushes around his body when pivoting mid-flight. 

God, he misses the sky. And Riley up there with him. The others. Their whole unit, small though it was. The tinny sound of Riley’s laugh on the comms as they outmaneuvered jets in training, the joy of it, the rush of the wind, the chill in the air that high up.

“Hey, Sammy, you’re falling behind!” comes the call from one of his running mates as the pack of them catch up to him. Little shit.

Sam puts on a burst of speed to keep his lead and tries to shake his thoughts of Riley and of flight from his mind. Time to focus on running, on the path they’d chosen through the park, on keeping ahead of the others.

He misses his usual route, the Washington Memorial, the Reflecting Pool. He misses the D.C. pigeons and their friendly personalities. Misses the way he could just go for a run when he felt like it, without being on guard the whole time. 

Or _as_ on guard, anyway.

And his little house that’s apparently already sold—and who the hell bought it that could skip escrow and options and get the titles worked out so fast? He’d thought it would be on the market long enough he could still decide to go back. 

A month, maybe two. Buyer’s market, seller’s market, you still have at least a little time before someone snaps a house up. He sort of wishes he hadn’t put it all in the realtor’s hands. Hadn’t signed over the paperwork in advance and whatnot. 

But he was right. He’s got to keep telling himself that. It was time to leave D.C. and come back home. That was a sign. 

Man lands on the roof of your car and knifes your date to death as part of a murder spree across the city, and that’s a _sign_ , pure and simple. One close call like that, one scare, one stint revisiting the helplessness of when Riley’d died… Once is enough.

But maybe he wasn’t entirely right. Maybe he should have _visited_ home. Come back for a month or two, and then returned. Now that he’s sold his house and relocated, transferred his job and everything, it’ll be harder to just saunter back into town and pick it all back up once this killer is brought in.

And, he reflects… It seems like the killer might have _been_ brought in.

At least, that’s what the newscasters are speculating on. As a single night without incident bleeds into multiple days with nothing but a few copycat graffiti artists spraying stars on the walls, it’s increasingly easy to think he overreacted.

Maybe that awful shadow in leather was apprehended by special forces—S.H.I.E.L.D., maybe. The military. Not just local police. Maybe it was a coverup, or _is_ a coverup, some operative or other who snapped. 

Or maybe he just decided he’d gotten enough blood on his hands and it was time to pack up his knives and slip into the history books as some monthlong Jack the Ripper type. If he crossed paths with the guy dressed like a civilian and not a murderous shadow, he’d be hard pressed to recognize him.

Anyone with longish brown hair and a decent build could be the culprit. Well, and a metal arm.

More worryingly, that culprit could be traveling. Sam hasn’t been checking the news as much as he could be—that shit’s not healthy, and he knows it—but even just hitching rides… Monday morning they announce some bodies. Tuesday morning, crickets. Wednesday morning, crickets. Thursday morning, crickets. Here is it is Friday morning, and this guy could be anywhere.

Even New York City. 

And it took them a while to figure out that what had killed Holly was a serial slasher, not just a freak encounter with a maniac. All those slashes, all those cuts—a fucking star hacked into her face. 

It had been too dark to tell on the highway, and he’d been paying attention to other things, like the amount of blood, the fact that she was going to die, the fact that he could do nothing to prevent her death.

Like Riley.

But Riley is in the dawn, and Sam needs to be looking forward. Not where has he been and what has he done, but what is he doing and where is he going. Specifically…

Is he going to see this apartment with the realtor later today, or is he looking at places in D.C.? Is he staying with his parents until he’s back on his feet in the mental health department, or is he moving out and settling somewhere while he completes this latest journey?

If he’s not moving to an apartment here, not moving back to D.C., not staying with his parents… then where _is_ he going? He could go anywhere. What’s the West Coast like? What about the Midwest? 

No, not the Midwest. That much he knows. Gotta be somewhere on a coast. He needs that water, needs the ability to drive a little ways out and see the great expanse of ocean with the waves crashing in, and not a dried-up desert in sight.

Sam has a final lap with his group and then heads back home, or to his parents’ home, anyway. Takes the stairs at a jog to convince himself that he’s still got energy and hasn’t run it all out to become a lump on a sofa and watch whatever is not the news for the day.

It’ll be different when he starts at the VA Monday morning. He’ll have a routine, then. One that includes a run in the morning and then helping people get their lives back all day long. It’ll distract him, but it’ll also help him.

Helping others process their grief and their guilt and their loss helps him process his own. And his luggage has grown again, since that attack. His patience has been quicker to burn out, his sleep has been as disturbed as he thought, with Holly and Riley taking turns dying, sometimes switching places.

And with the guilt that this woman he barely knew has somehow got a space in his mind where Riley once occupied it all.

He knows it’s just a coincidence, just the fact that she’s recent, that her death is fresh and his helplessness to stop it is even fresher and an echo of Riley. But it still rankles. 

“How many eggs you want?” his ma asks as he passes the kitchen on his way to shower.

“Two’s fine, thanks Ma.” He circles back and kisses her cheek. “I’ll clean up after breakfast, so don’t you wash a single dish.”

She gives him a little side smile and shoos him back the way he was going. “I’ll wash what I feel like washing, Sam Wilson, and you’ll let someone take care of you.”

“Yes, Ma.” 

He’s definitely washing the dishes after breakfast. And she’ll probably leave him a few from making it, too. Maybe the griddle. That one’s heavier than the rest, and her wrist was bothering her yesterday.

Sam greets his dad as he heads for the bathroom, and then gets himself cleaned up from his run.

It doesn’t matter whether he’s meeting a realtor to look at a place, calling a realtor to get some places lined up to look at in D.C., or staying right here all day and into the future: Every day is a shower day, and he’s gotta look after himself and stay fit and healthy.

To do otherwise is to give up, and Riley would not want him moping in sweaty workout clothes on the sofa eating chips.

He’d gotten to the point where he did these things for himself, before the attack. Where he’d wanted to get up, wanted to go run and clean up after. Where he’d wanted to eat—and he’s going to end up with three eggs on his plate instead of two, he just knows it—and had looked forward to his days.

Just for him. He hadn’t been living for Riley’s memory, and he’ll get there again after this hiccup. Recovery isn’t linear, and there are setbacks, and even grief is often a series of waves to weather and not a constant storm overhead.

When he gets out of the shower, he sees that he’s missed a call. Unknown, no message. Must not matter, then. Might be another reporter wanting the big scoop, an interview with “a survivor” who saw a murder up close and can “tell all.” 

He’s only thought about changing his number five times since the attack. But it’s just such a hassle changing his number with all the people he does regular, legitimate business with, and the reporters and spammers will just find him again afterward. Ugh.

“Oh,” his ma says after he’s got the dishes washed up and she’s heading out for work. “Almost forgot. There was a man, called for you earlier, while you were running. Said he’d call again.”

“No message?”

“No message. Sounded nice, real earnest. Not like the sharks who keep hounding you for an interview. I gave him your number.”

“Thanks, Ma. I’ll pick up in case he calls back.”

She nods her approval at him. “You do that. I don’t want you sitting around on that sofa all day, you hear?”

Sam smiles. “You got it, Ma. I’m seeing a realtor, I think. Around 2.”

“Good. Do you good to get back on your feet again.”

* * *

“…from the windows on this side, just lovely. So much skyline. You’d have light in the morning,” the realtor continues, “and it wouldn’t be too bright out in the evening when you’re…”

It’s funny how you keep seeing things once you’ve seen them in the first place. Her lapel pin is a small red octopus, its tentacles curling daintily, almost like a cloud around its head. It’s not something most people would have on a lapel.

He tries to recall whether the brokerage she’s with had some sort of aquatic theme in the name or logo, and then notices that she’s beaming at him expectantly. 

Sam blinks away from the little octopus pin. “Sorry. Was admiring your—” he gestures at his chest where the lapel pin would be if he was the one wearing it. “I’ve been seeing a lot of those lately.”

She reaches up to brush her pin, looking less flattered and more alarmed for a second, and then settling into a mixture of the two. “Really?” she asks. “That’s a strange. I’m usually something of an oddity for wearing this.”

The realtor gives him a little smile and a laugh, now firmly flattered and not alarmed in the slightest. Maybe she’s just not used to people remarking on her jewelry. Or maybe she’s too used to people remarking on it in a negative way, and that was more defensive and less alarmed to start off.

“It’s pretty,” he says, both because it is an attractive piece and because that would likely set her at ease. If he’s going to find a place for anything close to affordable on a VA salary, he’s going to have to be in good with the realtors in the area.

It’s just such a striking piece… 

He thinks back. Holly’s sweater, for one. The guy with the tattoo. The server with the charm bracelet. This realtor. The bumper sticker on the car his Uber had been behind on the way out here. Hell, the moving company who’d sent the truck with the octopus holding eight boxes to pack up his house back in D.C. 

Sam shrugs with a smile. “Just one of those things, I think. You know. See a red car, and then you’re noticing all the red cars out there on the streets.”

She laughs again. “Too true,” she says. “Soon you’ll be seeing these around every corner!”

* * *

It’s a little before four when his phone rings again, and the number is a New York area code, not D.C. Might be the guy his ma told him about. Not as likely to be D.C. reporters looking for an interview.

Sam pushes Accept with more than a little trepidation. It’s not that he’s worried about the other end of the line—worst case, he can hang up and block the number—but it’s the first time since this media hounding started that he’s answered a call he didn’t request. 

“This is Sam Wilson,” he says, keeping his tone professionally uninvested. He’s of no interest, and he has no interest, and unless you’re legitimate, keep it short. Not that the tone has ever worked.

“Sam, I’m glad I caught you this time. This is Steve Rogers, and I would like to offer you a job.”

He’s halfway to hanging up on this wretched crank caller when it occurs to him that he’s honestly got nothing better to do with his afternoon than string the guy along. 

“Oh, wow,” he says, deadpan. “Steve Rogers. Captain America is calling me, lowly Sam Wilson, with a job opportunity.”

There’s a pause on the other end, then a muffled “Nat, it’s like I said, he doesn’t believe me. Would you _please_ —”

“Oh, _no_ ,” comes a woman’s voice, and he can hear the teasing smile behind her words. “You got yourself into this, Rogers.”

Maybe this is the real deal. Maybe that’s the Black Widow, Nat, Natasha, wasn’t it? She’d been part of the Avengers team that saved the city—and probably the world—back in May. And the Avengers had relocated to D.C. to catch the serial killer. 

“So you’re really Captain America?” Sam asks, not really believing it, but willing to give this a bit more of his time. 

“I really am. And the world knows I can’t lie.” His voice on the phone is earnestness itself, with a bit of undercurrent most wouldn’t pick up, but that Sam’s had worlds of practice hearing. 

This is a guy who’s seen combat recently, who hasn’t been debriefed properly and still has some unaired issues. And there’s a hint of Brooklyn under it all, too. 

“So, uh, look,” maybe-Captain America says into what’s apparently been a longer silence than Sam had realized. “I know this is out of the blue for you, but you did say if I was coming down here to kick the Winter Soldier’s ass, you’d move back down to back me up.”

What? What’s a Winter Soldier? Other than an iconic line of poetry.

“I heard it on the news,” maybe-Captain America continues. “That must make it true, right?”

What the hell? Captain America was watching the news when— 

“Hang on, hang on, hang on,” Sam says. “You’re telling me that you. Are Captain America. That Captain America has called _me_ up on the phone. Because he saw me on TV news talking trash about a psychotic maniac.” 

He blinks. “That’s what you’re telling me.”

“That is exactly what I am telling you. And that’s about all I can tell you on the phone. We can meet later today at Stark— At Avengers Tower, if you’re available. The big ugly building marring the skyline.”

“I—” And really, what’s he going to say to maybe-Captain America, with maybe-Black Widow in the background, other than “yes, sir?”

“I can be there,” he finally says. “How does six sound?”

“Six o’clock. It’s a date. I’ll be there.”

The last thing he hears before the phone goes dark is the opening volley of what promises to be a wave of laughter from maybe-Black Widow.

It’s a date? Is that… Did he just get asked out on a date by Captain America? Or is that Captain America not quite knowing modern phrases? Or is that not-Captain America being an even more gigantic asshole than before?

Only one way to tell, he supposes. Better get cleaned up for a maybe-date, maybe-job interview with maybe-Captain America.

* * *

It’s not just maybe-Captain America who is waiting for him at Avengers Tower, but actual-Captain America, along with actual-Black Widow and actual— Well, the bow and arrow guy. Whatever his name was.

And that’s at least not made more intimidating by all of them being in spandex-leather mix fabric uniforms. Instead they’re dressed very much like normal people. There’s cool wine aunt, slouchy uncle with few prospects and out-of-touch dad who never got the memo about khakis and couldn’t sport a dad bod if he ate nothing but pasta for the rest of time. 

Seriously. Sam wants to get him out of that get up and into something that would actually look good on him, or maybe not into anything at all but just out of that get up. Not a great first impression for going forward with, though, thinking Captain America is hot.

They’re all dressed like people, though, and that makes it way easier to sit down at what turns out to be less conference room and more minimalist lounge with espresso and some sort of baked vegetable crisps.

“So first off,” he says, after hearing the overview, “sign me up. I want that lunatic off the streets and off of people’s cars. I guess you _can_ call the news true, because I’m in.”

Now how to explain that he’ll need to bunk in a hotel somewhere, or else see if their base has an empty couch… 

“Second off,” Arrow Guy says, “We’re kinda living in your house, dude.”

What?

The Black Widow nods. “We confirmed addresses while checking your personnel files from the Air Force and getting a look at your records with the Falcon project. Very impressive.”

“Also, a nice house,” Captain America adds. “I’m sure we can convince Stark to give it up.”

“No, no.” Sam swallows the last of his espresso in one gulp. “I’ve got Avengers living in my house. It’s fine. Maybe I can crash on my couch.”

Captain America approaching him, the Avengers wanting him on the team, Tony Stark buying his house… What is his life turning into?

“Don’t give up that soon.” The Black Widow wipes a bit of crisp dust off onto a napkin. “Stark hardly sleeps, Clint can sleep with me, and you can bunk up with Rogers.” She flashes a mischievous smile. “Problem solved.”

Just like that. Problem solved. He’s going to be an Avenger. This might be the highlight of his career.

Well, his ma didn’t want him sitting around all day, and this is the ultimate in moving forward. Better yet, how best to do something about what happened to Holly and all those others than to stop the guy making the streets run red in D.C.?

“When do I start?”

* * *

That evening, apparently. That’s when he starts. 

That’s also when he meets Tony Stark, which is not the highlight of his career by a long shot.

But between Stark and the rest of them, he’s got something close to a handle on the situation he’s coming in to. 

The killer is some enhanced super soldier from Russia who possibly got traded over to S.H.I.E.L.D. at some point in the ‘90s when the Soviet Union came crashing down, or maybe as late as 2009. Which isn’t a wide range at all. If they can’t narrow it a little further than that, he’s not exactly surprised they haven’t caught him yet.

So the current prevailing theory is that Captain Russia is upset about this or about something else, and has been attacking S.H.I.E.L.D. in revenge. Or, that Captain Russia was always working for the Russians and now he’s stopped _pretending_ to work for the Americans.

Lots of Cold War fun times, and he thought he’d managed to miss living through that part of history.

Maybe Secretary Pierce was involved and getting reports directly from Captain Russia, and maybe he wasn’t. Maybe Jasper Sitwell is trying to get Captain Russia to come back home, or maybe he wants to buy his loyalty from Russia for the very first time. Or maybe he’s not even in on it.

Maybe the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. is in on it. But probably he isn’t. Maybe he’s in on something else altogether, and this is just bleeding into it. _Probably_ he’s in on something else altogether; he has fingers in a lot of pies.

Sitwell, though, is definitely working with STRIKE; the Avengers are working with Fury, but are not unanimously happy about this. STRIKE is working with the local police, and this may or may not be a good thing.

Captain Russia is the prize and it’s a race to get him, but the prize has disappeared. First team to dig up the prize wins, but only if they can also subdue the prize and keep the whole thing hush-hush. 

And apparently, all non-Avenger parties in this could spook if any sudden movements are made. Whether that be Sitwell, STRIKE, S.H.I.E.L.D., Fury, or the prize himself.

They had this guy in their sights, gave it their best shot—literally—and he got away clean, no contact.

Somehow they think Sam can help them fix that.

Oh boy.


	27. Interlude | You saw me in new light (and I saw you)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title comes from [“Slow Life”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeZRJbB3_00) by Of Monsters and Men.

**—Washington D.C. | Friday, 08 June 2012 | 5:00 p.m.—**

Something tries to jostle it awake when it should be sleeping, should be healing, should be processing fuel and rebuilding the body and the stolen will. And it _is_ jostled awake, but there is no need to reveal this. Let them think that it sleeps still, establish the initiative, prepare the body for pre-emptively striking back. If it needs to strike back.

Something got close enough to it in this new den to jostle it.

It is still injured, but not so badly anymore that the guard would slip. There should be nothing to concern it. It would detect something unwanted, something dangerous, something to be avoided. It detected nothing until the jostling, and so, it is safe.

Safe enough to ignore the— 

No. It is the dog. 

That’s right.

The dog that earned a place with it by stubbornly refusing to be lost. The dog that it is not ashamed to admit is better at tracking it than it is at tracking targets. Slow moving, but dedicated to the mission objective. A good dog.

The dog is pawing at it, making whining noises high up in its throat now that it has allowed the eyes to open.

The dog has brought it a reward today—this morning, judging by the sun trickling through a crack in the shuttered window.

The dog likes to bring it rewards even though it has done nothing to earn them for several days now, since the dog has known it. Perhaps the dog thinks it is a big creature the way it thinks the dog is a little— No. Not a _little_ creature, so much. Not a little creature in size, but in spirit.

Sometimes the reward is a single shoe, laces spilling out like intestines in a filthy tangle, jagged holes in the sides, mud. Sometimes it is a scrap of fabric or a small piece of tree, branch-twig-stick depending on the location.

This morning, it is a brown-fuzz-ball that might have been a yellow-fuzz-ball before life happened to it, before the mud and shit of existence made it what it is. The ball is soggy from the dog’s mouth, but still firm when it sits up and reaches out to accept the reward.

It would never insult the dog by rejecting a reward, even one it has not earned.

Just as it would not allow the dog to go without a reward, even if it has to borrow from future jobs well done to obtain them. It needs the fuel, the dog has earned the rewards, and so it will borrow and borrow, to feed them both and to prepare for the next mission.

It lightly squeezes the ball, feels the give of the fuzzy shell of it in the palm. A nice reward, one it does not deserve, one it will use anyway to train the flesh of the recently healed right hand. It has already been using the fangs, twirling them between the fingers, drawing them and sheathing them seamlessly. Now it will work on gripping larger things.

The dog flops down beside it with a breathy garbage sigh, putting its head on a knee and looking up with its one eye. The triangle ears twitch, dog words telling it to put the hand on the dog’s head and pet.

It complies, putting the metal hand on the dog’s head and stroking its patchy yellow fur, rubbing behind its blanket-floppy ears, scratching and petting, sometimes gently patting. The dog’s tail slaps the concrete, whips back and forth, sweeps aside debris.

This is a broken dog that likes to lick the hands and face instead of bite the throat and groin. This preference and the limp and the missing eye make it a broken and worthless dog to anyone who is like a handler-operator-trainer-technician. Hardly a dog at all, just looking like one.

The way it can look like a person when it needs to in order to accomplish its mission objectives. 

The mission is the most important thing.

The mission cannot be a failure, and so it must be ready. Must be sure. Must have no question about its ability to carry out the strike. 

The longer it waits to regain full functionality, the more likely they will find it, and it has no true nest with barriers in place and protection fashioned from the bones of the building. What it has is a broken dog that cannot be allowed to come to harm. 

So they cannot find it. It cannot let that happen. Should move fast, should move now, should lash out when night falls.

But the longer it waits, the more ready it will be to fight, to take on the target, the daring target, even more daring than the researcher or the expert with the words. The target who commands STRIKE teams, who sent them after it, who is a threat that needs to be eliminated so that it can continue its work without interruptions.

The more ready it will be for the dispatcher, and for the ones guarding the dispatcher, the ones lying in wait for it all over town. Not even the pointless targets are accessible for a quick reward without a struggle—it has checked, has stalked them while the dog slept, has counted the others watching these targets as a trap—and this is the dispatcher’s doing.

The STRIKE teams that attack it, ambush it, chase it off. With their words and white electric fire batons and tiny fangs on sticks. Shooting at it from across the street, but silently, so silently. _It_ is the one that makes the tricky shots, ensures the silent deaths, not them. 

Them. The ones who want to take it back.

It is _not._ Going back.

* * *

It does not regret the dog. Would not send the dog away, or drive the dog off. Isn’t sure it could at this point. The dog is its responsibility. _A_ mission, even though not _the_ mission.

But the dog is _not_ a silent hunter, is not swift and steady on its feet, is not a shadow slipping through the night.

The dog makes the hunt for an unearned reward harder for it. Wuffing like that. Scratching at things. Making metal cans and glass bottles clatter in their beautiful blue plastic tubs with the crisp white triangles painted on the sides.

It closes the eyes briefly, considers the next location, since this one is now compromised by the dog’s noises. There are more of these blue tubs at the next house, and the next. All the open blue plastic tubs with their loud contents.

But a few streets over, only lidded plastic boxes on wheels lurk behind the houses. No blue plastic tubs for the dog to disturb. They will need to do this there.

Another clink of glass bottles, and then a lock being thrown open, a door being opened a crack. It knows what to do when this happens, how to be nothing at all so that no civilian will see it. So that their eyes will pass over it as though it were just another brick in a wall, another blade of grass in a lawn.

It is still and dark and silent. It is always still and dark and silent. And it stays that way. The woman—softness of features, slender fingertips on door, height, color of slipper: yes, woman—looking out the thin gap in the door will not see it, will only see the dog.

No one sees it unless they are looking for it. People don’t _want_ to see it, so they don’t. Their eyes slide off to focus on something they would rather see.

The woman opens the door and cautiously steps out, smooth aluminum club in hand, fear dripping from her face, hair a million tiny braids down to her waist. It is the woman from before. The woman who would not go back. From the alley. The last truly successful night it has had.

It knows this woman. But the woman will not know it. Will not even see it. Will look away, past it, over it, through it.

The dog looks up at her with its pink tongue hanging from its mouth. Just a dog here. Nosing around in your bottles. Nothing to see, nothing to fear, nothing to investigate. A closer look will still reveal just a dog.

The woman looks around, sees nothing but the dog. Holds her hand out to be licked, lowering the aluminum club as she foolishly relaxes her vigilance.

The truth is that she is safe here, but she doesn’t know that. She might not be. If the asset were not the one lurking behind her wheeled plastic box, if it was something else, she would not be safe.

The dog finishes licking her hand, but its tail doesn’t finish whipping back and forth. And there are many good things about the dog, but also many things that are not convenient at all.

Like the way the dog turns, takes a few steps toward it, and looks up at it as if to insist that another hand be extended for licking. And wuffs softly. And presses a nose to the thigh when it does not reach down.

Frustration.

There has to be a way to teach the dog not to do this. But it does not want to teach the dog lessons. Does not want the dog to suffer.

It isn’t even wearing the killing face, the hiding face, the hungry face. And in the hands there is a clear plastic box of spotty meat wafers and not a knife. Escape is still simple, though. It is quicker than the woman and can vanish in a blink. But the dog will be harder to extract from— 

The woman gasps as her eyes pick out the shape of it in the shadows, but the aluminum club doesn’t come up in defense. Her eyes are wide, but there is more than just fear in them. 

“It’s you,” she whispers.

Why is she not afraid of it? It knows that she doesn’t need to be, but _she_ doesn’t know that. The innocent ones it protects never seem to know that. So why…

She had screamed when it saw her behind the building with loud noise, when it had landed on the man tearing at her pants and had cut him up. Had screamed and screamed. Only the noise from the building had allowed it enough time to be properly thorough in meeting its mission objective to escort the man into death via pushing metal fangs into his body the way he had intended to push his body into the woman.

But now she doesn’t scream at all.

She keeps her eyes on it—on the _face_ , the naked skin face! and now she has seen it and could recognize it if she sees it again—and slowly crouches down, instead. Slowly, slowly, inch by inch, bends her legs and extends her arm and sets the aluminum club on the concrete with a light clink. 

Her braids brush the ground.

Her hair should not touch the ground. She is a person who should not be shoved down, whose hair should not— 

“Is this your dog?” she asks. Her eyes leave the skin face just long enough to frown at the reward it clutches in the hands. “Are you hungry?”

She is… a feeder?

It stares at her. Even the skin face can be a mask if it is still enough. Even the naked face can hide itself in such stillness, can reveal nothing to those who look for responses.

The woman—maybe feeder with the long braids, maybe not—doesn’t seem to mind the way it hides behind the skin face.

Protocol dictates—

There is no protocol. There are no handlers-operators-trainers-technicians with a right to hurt it, or to deny it a reward, or to declare it insufficient, useless, a failure. There is no feeder with a right to—

But protocol dictates that it will be fed when it has done well, and its success will be determined by others. Protocol dictates passive acceptance of the verdict. Protocol dictates that no response is the right response.

So it doesn't even dare swallow. Blink. Look away. Because protocol… 

“Stay here?” she asks. “Please? I’ll be right back, I promise. I’ve got some fruit, cheese, I’ll make you a sandwich, there are chips.” The feeder with the long braids looks at the dog. “I’ve got some chicken your dog can eat. Please.”

Why that sound, that word, please? 

The dog whines and shoves its nose harder at the thigh.

The woman slips back inside the house, leaves the door open behind her, makes noises inside. Kitchen noises. Plastic bags crinkling, refrigerators opening. 

It stays there. The feeder with the— The woman asked it to. _Asked_ it. Said please.

It offers the dog one of the meat wafers, rubs behind the dog’s ears as the dog makes the reward disappear in an instant. The dog licks and licks at the arm, the hand, the fingers.

“Oh, thank god,” comes the woman’s voice as she reappears in the doorway. There is a noisy plastic bag in her hand, held by the loops at the top. “I thought— I honestly thought I’d never have a chance to do this, but… _Thank you_.” 

She holds the bag out, then seems to rethink things, and sets it down off to the side, by the plastic box with the lid and wheels. “I don’t know who you are or why you were still there when I needed help, or why you stopped to help me, but thank you.”

And now she waits. For what, it isn’t sure. But she has given it a reward, and has said new words to it. No one has ever told it those words before. What else is there to do here? Is it meant to approach now? Because it will _not_ do that. 

It finally decides to nod at her.

It had done that to others, nodded at them, after it sliced apart the evil that was hurting them, before it fled to the darkness and shadows where it belongs. Had nodded. It had nodded at this woman, too.

She accepts it this time with a small smile that somehow does not mean danger and impending torment. And she adds a nod of her own, instead of screaming and crab-walking backward to press herself against a wall.

Maybe this is what thank you is about. She knows that it is not here to harm her, so she will nod at it. And smile the smile that is not meant for assets, but that she gives it anyway.

“Stay safe,” she whispers. “Thank you, and please stay safe.” She scoops up the aluminum club and gives it another smile over her shoulder before the door closes.

There is the turning of a deadbolt. Good. When it is no longer lurking here, she will need the safety of a door and lock again. The lock won’t save her from anything determined to get in. But _nothing_ will save her from something truly determined.

This is, at least, good enough for the threats this collection of houses has to offer.

The bag, it learns, contains other bags. Clear plastic bags, filled with colorful rewards in reds and greens and oranges and even a dusty blue. There is a different reward in a bag with bumpy orange logs on the front and some misshapen spotted person. And a bag with a sandwich. And a bag with the sort of chicken that is white and hard instead of pink and slick.

Also, a yellow sphere with curling white lines around it. Fuzzy. A mystery: How does she know about the right hand and the brown-fuzz-ball the dog brought it earlier? How does she know to supply a yellow one? New, maybe. A new one, not yet brown, not yet painted with mud and street dirt.

It holds the bag close against the patched-up tac gear, and doesn’t look up to the window where it knows the woman is watching through the soft things hanging down next to the glass. She has already nodded at it. Smiled at it. Richly rewarded it. It will not greedily seek more from her.

Instead, it slides on the killing face, the hiding face, the mouth of metal that people do not want to see. It runs a hand along the dog's back, gets a lick and a tail thump in return.

And it slinks back into the darkest of the shadows, the in-between places where only a select few ever think to walk. The dog follows, pausing its already slow progress to smell everything.

There has to be a way to teach the dog the lessons that it must know, but without allowing the dog to suffer. To ensure that the dog remains behind on these missions even when it is not sleeping, that the dog trusts it to return and therefore doesn’t jeopardize opsec. 

It will not chain the dog up, will not lock the dog away, will not go back itself and will not allow another to be taken back and will never, never, never be the one that takes another back.

But what is a lesson without pain? How is learning possible without hurting?

It will have to be very creative. There has to be a way. If there is not, it will make one.

* * *

Up goes the ball. Down goes the ball. Up into the sky, down into the palm. Squeeze go the fingers, wrapping around yellow-fuzz, gentle to not damage the ball, hard enough to work the muscles.

Twitch of right index finger on the release. Normal. That happens. It is relaxed, it is safe, it is well-fed—richly rewarded by the feeder with the long braids—and it is not alone. The finger can twitch. It is fine.

Up goes the ball. Up goes the dog’s eye, too, watching the ball make a gentle rise and then gently fall into the palm. Eye on the ball. Keep your eye on the ball. Someone said that once. Or something like it.

Someone said something like that once.

It tosses the ball up again, catches it again, squeezes it again. Up, down, squeeze, release. Up, down, squeeze, release. The dog’s eye follows the ball.

Does the dog want the ball?

The hand is fine now, the fingers are strong and nimble. There is only lingering pain that will not interfere with the mission to come. It can give the ball to the dog now, just as the dog gave the brown-fuzz-ball to it earlier.

Up goes the ball, but outward as well, toward the dog. Underhand throw, soft, gentle. Tossing to the dog, not throwing at the dog. The dog is a good dog, is an innocent creature even if not a little one, and nothing should be thrown at it.

The dog’s jaws snap shut on the ball and the tail wags this way and that in what it has established is a demonstration of the dog’s excitement.

Good. The dog wanted the ball and is pleased to have the ball now. Excellent.

The dog moves forward a shuffling half-foot and noses the ball into the chest, pressing forward until it takes the ball from its jaws.

Does the dog _not_ actually want the ball? 

The dog puts distance between them, several limping steps but with the tail wagging and the ears perky and interested. The dog focuses its eye on the ball once more. Its backside wiggles back and forth with excitement.

What… is it supposed to do? The dog— Maybe the dog wants to catch the ball again. Maybe this is a game, but a game without any rewards to earn by suffering. A game without any rewards or fun. Just a game for the sake of playing a game.

There doesn’t seem to be any harm in it, not to it, and certainly not to the dog.

It tosses the ball again, gently, toward but not directly at the dog. It will not throw things at the dog. It is a good dog, an innocent dog, a dog that is so broken that it does not want to bite. Nothing will be thrown at the dog.

The dog is excited—wag, wag—to catch the ball, and even more excited—so much wagging the dog can hardly walk—to bring the ball back again and drop it on the ground at its feet.

Oh. So this is how the game is to be played. Always the ball will come back to it; the dog will get the ball when it is tossed and bring it back.

The dog can hardly sit still, it is so excited to catch the ball again.

Well. It can play this game. Perhaps the dog’s limp will improve if it is given the chance to work the joints a little at a pace it finds comfortable. And perhaps the dog will become even better at moving at quicker paces and it will not need to carry the dog partway into their midnight relocations.

Yes, all of the good things, and none of the rewards or the suffering that earns them.

It will not make the dog suffer. Never. It is not going back and the dog is not going back in its place.

Never going back.

No. Never.


	28. Bruce | We are all basically alone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title comes from [“Imitosis”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2m90GEsnIs) by Andrew Bird.

**—New York City | Saturday, 09 June 2012 | 8:00 a.m.—**

Bruce rubs at his eyes under his glasses and tucks his sigh away where no one has to hear it. 

A murder count of nearly fifty now that they’ve tracked all the earlier victims. They think, anyway. A killer who has completely disappeared on them. Tony and his antics. Working with S.H.I.E.L.D. again, and so soon after he swore them off.

What. A. Nightmare. 

Leaving aside the ordeal that is getting smuggled back into the country by Tony Stark under Thaddeus Ross’s far-too-interested nose, this whole situation in D.C. is an absolute nightmare. And he understands why Tony’d kept at it until he caved and agreed to join them, but he still doesn’t want to be involved.

There are just so many elements of this monthlong carnage festival that are _wrong._

Not just wrong in the sense that serial killing is obviously wrong, but wrong in the sense that they are missing so many things that should be there to be examined. They have all these pieces, and they don’t fit well, and there are so many that are clearly still missing.

But with the sheer quantity of pieces they _do_ have, the idea of how many pieces it would take to fill the gaps is not a pleasant one.

By now he’s been through all of the photos, all of the diagrams, all of the blood-painted scenes. Each one is unique, but there’s definitely a common theme, something about the creator of all this destruction that rings true throughout.

And not just the star shape.

A sense of overkill, maybe, but more one of… Artistry. There’s attention to proportion, maybe even some elegance or grace to the way details are arranged. It looks like chaos at first glance, but there are patterns repeated, something that ties them all together as having one architect.

And a sense of justice, despite the end results or perhaps because of them, depending on your vantage point. This for that, almost, but in reverse. The common civilian criminals who’ve been hacked apart don’t have as much of the grand, sweeping display as the victims they’ve tied to S.H.I.E.L.D., all of whom were treated to much, much _worse_ for doing much, much _less_ that they know of.

Then there’s this letter. 

“Up or down,” for instance. Why are those the only two options, when the easiest way to get a stomach out of a man’s torso is to carve it straight out? What’s the significance of up and down in this case that he’d go through the effort of getting a hand up—or down, as the case may be—an orifice that is not meant to accommodate a hand?

Why make it harder for this Callahan than it had to be, especially since that makes it harder and far messier for the fisting practitioner himself? That points to revenge and a hell of a grudge. He’s not sure he wants to meet the man who holds this level of grudge against so many people.

Not that he’s afraid. The Other Guy would make mincemeat of anyone who tried to hurt them. He’s more concerned about the Other Guy getting ideas. They’ve already got enough of a well-earned reputation for causing mayhem to add willful slaughterhouse festivities to the mix.

That bit about earning stomachs, too. Not doing well enough to keep something that’s rightfully his. What could anyone possibly have more right to than their own organs? Who’d have to _earn_ their own body or any piece thereof?

And how would he have earned his stomach? What would he have needed to do well enough to change his fate? Was that even an option presented in seriousness, or just pure mockery? The smiley at the end would point to mockery. 

Their quarry finds it amusing to hack these people up. Or is mimicking the amusement of others, possibly the amusement others have had at his expense. And as Natasha has spelled out, this Winter Soldier figure had done well, certainly had a stomach—a stomach of steel—to be able to eat the amount of things they suspect he’s been eating, clearing various kitchens.

The stomach itself is an unusual choice, though, and possibly worth considering more closely. Why has the stomach got to come out at all? Why not the heart? The heart is arguably the more popular organ to be hacked out of a still-living human body. 

Bruce glances at the backside of the note—what appears to be part of a manuscript on some band or other—and passes the note to Sam Wilson, the newest of their little avenging group by edict of Steve, and therefore almost certain to be a solid pick.

“Oh, yeah,” Tony says, looking up from his blueprint with a wave. “Total gastric bypass was writing a book about them and all their struggles through the years. So what do you think about the love note?”

Bruce ponders for a moment. 

“I think he has anger issues, holds a grudge better than most, and has a legitimate reason for what he’s doing.” He holds up hand. “Not a _good_ reason, or a reason that excuses this. Just something strong enough to warrant this level of reprisal. A genuine mountain, not a molehill.”

“Well, you’d know from anger issues,” Tony murmurs, ducking his head to focus again. “And making rage mountains out of a little—”

“Can we not jump _right_ into antagonizing each other?” Steve asks. “Even if we’re doing it with love.”

Tony tips his head toward Sam. “Can you believe we saved the world that one time?”

Sam sets the note down and flashes a half-smile. “Finding it difficult. But this time around, no one’s saving the world, just a city full of people who don’t need to be terrorized by tall, dark and crazy.”

“Oh yeah, you’ll fit right in,” Tony says. “Another good call by Captain Mom.”

Quite a lot has changed while he was in the jungle, and he’d only been there a little over a month. Clint is far more open, Steve has relaxed a good deal, Tony is just as Tony as before but somehow a little less Tony about it. Even Natasha seems more comfortable in the group, and not so aloof, for all that she and Clint have already headed back to D.C. instead of waiting to go together as a group.

“I’ll second that he seems angry, but not necessarily the anger management issues,” Sam says, proving how well he fits by continuing as though he isn’t bothered by the prospect of potentially disagreeing with the Hulk—and maybe he isn’t; that’d be nice, another person not afraid of him. 

“He seems way too controlled and choosey for any of this to be impulsive, even if it’s a crime of passion.”

“How do you mean?” Steve asks.

Sam shrugs. “You’ve got to be angry to jump a car and steal the steering wheel out of it, and you’ve got to be angry to climb inside and stab someone to death like he did Holly. But if you’re that angry and have issues controlling it, you’re not waiting around on the highway for a specific car. You’re just acting on it in the moment.”

Sam obligingly raises his arms to his sides while Tony takes a holographic laser measuring tool to his shoulder blades, because why break into a military establishment to get decommissioned wings when you can make better wings? 

“So, anger issues in the sense of being angry and doing the wrong thing about it, yes.” Sam lowers his arms again when Tony’s done. “Anger issues in the sense of being out of control and driven to impulse, not so much. That’s all.”

To Bruce, the curious part about the highway attack isn’t the brutality and suddenness of it, but the fact that the Soldier knew which car to find that particular woman in. 

How did he know who she’d be with? How did he know they’d be in his car and not hers or a cab? How did he know what Sam’s car looked like, the plates, the route he’d be taking, the time he’d take it? They didn’t find a tracker on her or on what was left of the car. So how’d he do it?

Sam’s right that it’s not explosive and impulsive anger issues at play here—nothing like the Other Guy coming out and ripping things apart. But it’s still anger at the heart of these actions. That much is clear. They’re just saying it differently.

“The real challenge,” Steve says over Tony’s muttering, “will be finding him before STRIKE does. Or even just finding him at all. It’s been five days, depending on how you count it up, and there’s not been a single verifiable attack.”

“Not that you’re complaining,” Tony quips.

Steve smiles grimly. “Not that I’m complaining,” he says.

“It’s one of the primary reasons we need you on this, Bruce,” Steve continues. “Not to be part of the action, but to get us _to_ the action. We need someone in the control room, so to speak, someone who’s got experience running from well-funded government agencies.”

“He’s got some advantages I never had,” Bruce says. “The cameras going blank. No one’s seen his face. Doesn’t seem to need the same kind of shelter.”

Frankly, from what Tony shared with him on the flight back from the jungle, Bruce doesn’t think they _will_ find this Soldier. It doesn’t matter if he lurks in the shadows for another few days or for another few months—they’ll find him when he comes out and plays his hand again, and not a moment earlier.

All signs point to injury and laying low, something that finally caught up to him no matter how careful he was in his killings. And all signs point to someone who neither needs nor knows certain creature comforts. At this time of year, he won’t even need the heat of a barrel fire or the huddle of others in an alley.

And since he’s enhanced, there’s a decent chance he wouldn’t need that anyway, even if this goes into winter. Steve had survived frozen in the ice for seventy years, no harm done. He, himself, doesn’t feel the cold the same way after his own encounter with a form of the serum and more gamma radiation than anyone should be exposed to. 

Their killer might run hot, if anything.

But operating primarily in the night means that he won’t have to worry as much about overheating, even in what all witnesses to date—and most importantly, Clint, the only truly reliable witness they have—describe as head-to-toe black leather.

Add to that the lack of camera footage, and there’s no doubt in his mind: The Soldier will remain hidden for exactly as long as he wants to. Their time is better spent preparing for an eventual encounter than trying to engineer such an encounter.

* * *

“Do we _have_ the scepter?” Bruce interrupts.

Sometimes that’s the only way to get a word in edgewise with Tony, and now he’s the only thing Tony’s got going on while JARVIS runs measurements and Steve and Sam gather up Sam’s things before driving one of Tony’s cars back to D.C. to join Clint and Natasha who’d driven down the night prior.

“No.” Tony leans back in his chair. “But—”

“Would obtaining the scepter help us search for or capture the Winter Soldier?”

Tony scowls. “Not that I can see. _Yet._ But if we _had_ it, we might be able to find a way it _could_ help us. Alien artifact. Not even Thor knows all its secrets. There’s no end to the ways it could help if we knew how it worked or—”

Bruce shrugs. “It sounds to me like the best course is to just forget about the scepter, Tony.”

“But we had so much fun poking at it for those few minutes we had.” 

Tony twirls a stylus like a drumstick. “And we could find out how it does the mind control thing and then how to prevent it without needing an arc reactor. And how to break that control without beating someone over the head until they pass out.”

He points the stylus at his temple. “That’s not a convenient fix, you know. Concussions add up and arc reactors aren’t fun to install.”

“I’m sure we all already have plenty of concussions between us,” Bruce allows.

Tony nods. “Barton more than most. See, I’m trying to be helpful here.”

“From what I’ve seen, I don’t think it’s coming across that way.”

Tony sighs and looks out the windows to the city below. “Story of our lives, Brucie-boy. All our well-intentioned science is…”

Bruce lets the rest of Tony’s words wash over him half-heard. 

In some ways, Tony is right. They’ve both had some good intentions over the years, and it’s not always gone to plan. Sometimes in a big, green, angry way. And it’s tempting to accept that togetherness, the camaraderie of being tragically misunderstood.

But ultimately, there are too many differences. Tony usually means well, and it usually goes alright for him in the end, after a bit of misunderstanding and semi-burned bridges. But for him? With the Other Guy?

Those aren’t semi-burned bridges capable of being repaired. It’s whole city blocks in shambles, torched houses, the streets themselves torn up, and so many people dead, dying, livelihoods and families destroyed.

Everywhere he goes, that’s a risk. Everywhere Ross tracks him down. Everywhere on the planet is a catastrophe waiting for discovery. 

And it doesn’t matter if he means well.

What’s worrying is that it also doesn’t matter if _S.H.I.E.L.D._ means well, either when dealing with the Soldier or when working with Bruce himself. If Nick Fury means well. Because something in S.H.I.E.L.D.—either a department or group of like-minded agents or an agenda spread throughout the organization—has made an enemy of this Winter Soldier, and that indicates that good intentions might not be enough.

If there’s something as pervasive as this largely guessed-at hit list that’s as wrong as it takes to inspire this level of grievance, there’s no telling where “operation keep track of Bruce Banner” happens to lie in the mix. How far can S.H.I.E.L.D. be trusted, ultimately, if there’s something this rotten buried in it?

They found him, sent Natasha after him, because they needed him for a specific purpose. But that means they knew where to find him, knew where he was. Knew enough to set up what they thought was a trap in that village.

S.H.I.E.L.D. means well? But they could track him down all the same and keep tabs on him. And meaning well doesn’t mean a thing if the end result is the destruction of a village and all the lives within it.

And so what if they have so far kept their tabs without divulging his location to Ross? How long could that possibly last with so much chaos in the ranks? How long could it last with the Avengers, even?

How long until he has to deal with Ross again, and it all blows up in his face?

At least in the Tower, the destruction can be limited. If there really is a Hulk-proof suite of rooms in the works, and one room of it already complete, then he can perhaps spend the bulk of this latest adopted catastrophe safely locked up by friendlies and communicating by phone.

And the same… Hm. The same might apply for this Soldier. Off the street, certainly, but then where? Where could they put him and trust that he’ll stay? Without breaking free, yes, but also without being broken out “for science” by someone like Ross. 

You can’t put an enhanced individual anywhere in this world and assume that certain factions—and not even just the American ones—won’t be scheming about somehow reproducing them in a lab and then mass-producing them for their own ends.

Chances are high the team hasn’t considered that angle. They don’t _live_ that angle, after all. He does. He has lived and in some ways is still living the shadow-lurking, observation-evading, perpetually endangered flight that their Soldier is no doubt living. 

And aside from some early poking, not even Steve has endured the sort of interest people like Ross have for him. Bruce, though? He knows that interest keenly, and he suspects the Soldier does as well.

Tony’s voice interrupts his thought process. 

“And you’re sure you don’t want to be where the action’s going down?”

“And become part of the action?” he asks. “I thought you were a genius.”

“Well, I do keep reminding everyone.” Tony grins. “But seriously, some of this has got to be waded through for a full appreciation. Literally. You gotta step in the bloody carpet and dodge chunks of spleen.”

Bruce smiles. “And yet, I’ll pass. Take a picture.”

“Picture might be worth a thousand words, but it’s got nothing on the real deal.”

He shrugs. Then: “Where do you plan to put him? When you catch him.”

Tony huffs out a short laugh. “ _If_ we catch him, at this rate. I’ve never seen anyone disappear so well, save maybe yourself.”

Bruce nods, but doesn’t let himself be sidetracked. “It’s not an idle question. Are you thinking a windowless box in a basement level of the Triskelion? Are you thinking a Soldier-proof Tower suite? What?” 

Because there’s no way the team is thinking the general prison population would be safe from this guy. That’s dropping a shark in an aquarium full of chum. But it’s not _just_ important to keep others safe from the Soldier. It goes the other way, too.

“Well, I mean, we’d talk to him first. Barton’s real big on that—wants to have a heart-to-heart and hear all about his grievances before we turn him over to the authorities.”

“Who are the authorities, Tony?” Bruce isn’t entirely surprised that hasn’t come up yet. Tony doesn’t appreciate authorities enough to consider them much. “You can’t think a police department is capable of handling him. You don’t want him going to S.H.I.E.L.D. What does that leave?” 

Tony shrugs. “FBI, CIA, the military mayb— Right.” He nods. “Ross. Hm.”

Now he sees it. 

“It’s going to be tricky keeping the criminal population—including whatever subset of S.H.I.E.L.D. he’s got a grudge against—safe from him, Tony. It’ll be trickier by far keeping _him_ safe from the military-industrial complex. They created Steve, they created me, and they’ll be very interested in the Soldier, whoever he is.”

Tony nods. “It’s gotta be the Tower. Here. We’ll make another Hulk-proof suite, we’ll— Or maybe we can— No, any padded cell he ends up in isn’t going to be safe from people like Ross. There’d be scientists and medical researchers in there night and day.”

“If he gets disappeared, whether by S.H.I.E.L.D. or in a padded cell, I guarantee he will be taken apart and studied until they can make more of him. And if he gets extradited back to Russia after political pressure, I don’t see that being a better situation for anyone.”

“Well, shit.”

Bruce has a feeling he’ll be giving up his Hulk-proof suite for a needier guest whenever they dig this Soldier up. Because the Avengers are an initiative at once part of S.H.I.E.L.D. and apart _from_ S.H.I.E.L.D., and working at least alongside the World Security Council, if not directly for them.

And the best case scenario for the Soldier is that _they_ are considered to be the authorities.


	29. Natasha | If there’s no one out there (put your trust in me)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title comes from [“Trust”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uk_sBYcY68A) by Saga.

**—Washington D.C. | Saturday, 09 June 2012 | 9:00 a.m.—**

Natasha comes awake with a grimace and is immediately on alert, all her senses extended to determine what— 

Oh. Not the sun thanks to Wilson’s blackout curtains, but the whimper from the living room.

Clint.

The past few nights he’s managed to sleep a few hours here or there, mostly upright, mostly with the TV on for some kind of background noise. Mostly in public, what with the sleeping situation with all four of them in this two bedroom house and the fact that Stark never seems to sleep.

Last night, though, no murders to investigate, no new information to glance over, no Stark, no Rogers, not even Wilson yet. Just her and Clint, a cute little house, a chance to recover from… everything.

It’s safe, and that’s when the nightmares are worse for him. Of course.

She sits up and reaches for her house-robe at the foot of her bed. She’ll wake him up by not waking him up, that’s all. It’s nine, time enough to start the day even on the closest thing to a day off any of them have had in over a week.

Natasha makes sure to drag her slippers over the hardwood floors as she makes her way to the kitchen, rattles the mugs while selecting the one she’s going to use, clinks the canisters as she sets up the coffee machine and sets the kettle for her tea on the stove with as sharp a clank as she can without being too obnoxious.

All of that should have done the trick, and so she pulls a chair out from the dining table and has a seat to wait for the noise to work its magic. 

He’d be self-conscious about it if she woke him up directly, either by touching his ankle or saying his name, and this way he can pretend whatever he’s going to pretend.

Plus, there’ll be coffee.

After a few minutes of silence, Clint makes a break for the bathroom, probably to check his eyes since there aren’t any mirrors handy elsewhere. He really has come far in the past month, but some things still have their hold on him.

The water starts running in the bathroom, but only briefly. Splashing his face, then. Staring at himself—staring himself down—daring his eyes to turn Tesseract blue. They never do, and she doubts they ever will, but she knows what it’s like to search for physical markers of self-control where there are none to be had.

How do you prove the absence of a controlling force?

Apparently, he’d mentioned the blue eyes to Rogers before they all came down to D.C. that first time. It’s good that he feels he can share. She’s… She’s not there yet, with her own baggage. But this little team… It’s a good one. She might actually get there with them.

“How you holding up with all this Soldier business?”

Ah. So that’s the tactic this morning. Deflect and focus on someone else’s trauma to avoid talking about his own. It’s a sound tactic, and she supposes she’s game for it today. It’s only him in the house with her. It’s safe enough.

“You know,” she says, “in a way it’s cathartic?”

He scratches at his rat’s nest of bedhead hair. Splashing his face and searching his eyes doesn’t mean taking the time to comb his hair, apparently. “Cathartic like finally facing the fear, or cathartic like finally paying it forward?”

Natasha swallows. Damn him for being insightful. His insight was her downfall back when she was destroying Red Room lives and here he goes with that again. Downfall, or salvation. 

So she laughs. “Who wouldn’t want to pull the mask off a childhood nightmare and find just another person under there?”

Maybe he’ll at least do her the favor of pretending to buy it.

Because yes, a good part of the catharsis in this chase is that she might be able to do for another what Clint had done for her, years ago when she was young and lost. Lost in her revenge, lost in the world, lost in herself.

Clint had tracked her down, talked her down, and brought her in. Given her his ears to listen to it all, to the injustices, the manipulations, the lies they’d told. Given her a shoulder to lean on as she tried to find herself in the middle of so many aliases that all she really knew were those lies they’d told her.

And yes, had given her a teammate for a while, had helped her find a sense of completion in her revenge, had shown her that there was more to look for in life, had convinced her that doing good in the world was the way to spite those who’d brought her up to do evil.

And damn it all, she was worth being saved, and he’d believed that more than she had. He’d proven it to her, proven it to Nick, proven it to Phil. He’d brought her out of the cold and into his home, into S.H.I.E.L.D., and— 

And that home turned out to be a broken one with some very large family secrets, but it was still home. And despite those secrets and divisions, S.H.I.E.L.D. had been a shelter for her. One she’d never have had without Clint to bring her in.

Now, it looks increasingly like some of those family secrets are as bad as the Red Room and Department X—might actually be Red Room or Department X infiltrations—and she might just be leaving home to join a new family.

And maybe she can pay it forward. 

Maybe she can take someone with her, invite him in, despite her fear and misgivings, despite the destruction that has followed in his wake for decades, despite the family being so new, fresh, young.

She was worth it, when only Clint believed that. The Soldier… might be worth it, too. If she believes it.

The whistle of the tea kettle breaks her reverie. 

“Do you think he can be saved?” she asks as she stands to pour her water.

Clint drops down into the seat across from hers. “I think everyone can be saved. I’ve got to. Otherwise I’m screwed.” 

“You weren’t in control of your actions, Clint. Yes, people died. But it wasn’t you who killed them. Put the blame where it’s due.”

Natasha pours him a mug from the carafe while the rest of the coffee keeps brewing, and sits down with her tea and his mug. “Loki used you to kill those people. You had no say in it.”

Clint shakes his head, but he still reaches across the table for the coffee. “He asked me, ‘Tasha. He asked me questions. Asked for advice. Asked for your weaknesses. And I—”

“And you were _forced_ to answer to the best of your ability. He got inside your head and inside your heart, and he twisted everything up. _That wasn’t you_.”

He takes a gulp of too-hot coffee and grimaces. “Felt like me. Knew everything I knew.” He shakes his head again and runs a hand through his hair.

“‘Tasha, I wanted to— I—” Clint stands up and circles the kitchen, finally settling in front of the sink looking away from her. 

“I wanted to please him,” he whispers. “I wanted that more than anything. To be a good little ant for him. It wasn’t even fear of the boot. It was just— I just wanted to please him for its own sake.”

It’s nothing he hasn’t told her before, though in less direct words. They’ve had similar conversations a few times in the past month, each one more direct, more concrete, with fewer dodges.

It hurts her to hear him like this, his voice so unsure and unsteady, filled with so much self-reproach. 

“I wanted to please my handlers,” she says softly as she stirs jam into her tea. “I wanted to be the best of their assets, the best of the widows, the most obedient and well-trained of all the Red Room.”

She sighs. “It was manipulation, Clint. That wasn’t me. You told me that. It was what they’d made me be, but it wasn’t who I _was._ Who I really was, deep down inside, where they couldn’t touch.”

Natasha takes a sip of her tea, letting the pause hang in the air.

“The part of you that was horrified,” she says, “the part of you that is still horrified, that is who you are, who you were those three days deep inside where he couldn’t touch. The rest wasn’t you. It was who he made you be, but not who you were and not who you are.”

“I wish I could believe you.” Clint breathes out a short laugh and clenches his hands on the edge of the sink. “I wish I believed that applied to me the way it applies to you.”

“If anything, it applies more to you.” 

Natasha gauges the right degree of closeness and gets up to stand next to him at the sink, not looking at him, but at the backsplash. “I was manipulated into loving the ones who took me from my home and taught me to kill,” she says. 

“But they didn’t have alien technology at their disposal. They were as human as the rest of us. There was no scepter to force my heart to follow them. Only honeyed words and mind games played against a little girl who couldn’t win. Against Loki with whatever technology was in that scepter? Clint, you _never stood a chance_.”

She puts her hand over his on the edge of the sink. “You’re not being fair to yourself. And you’re not being fair to anyone else in P.E.G.A.S.U.S. that evening who got caught by that scepter. Dr Selvig didn’t stand a chance and he knew who he was up against,” she says. “You didn’t even know the enemy.”

He shuts his eyes and breathes out harshly. “Logically, I hear you, ‘Tasha. I know you’re right. I do. I just can’t let myself believe it, like I’m giving myself a free pass. I—”

Natasha waits for him to continue, and when he doesn’t, she gently continues for him, whether it’s what he’d have said or not. “You were ambushed and unprepared to battle for your heart and soul. You were enslaved. You were imprisoned. And when you were freed, you went after that bastard and helped bring him down.”

Clint huffs out another bitter laugh. “And then he wormed _his_ way free and is out there, somewhere, with both of the toys he used to nearly take over this whole planet.”

“Then so be it.” She won’t lie and say that it doesn’t concern her. But what concerns her more is Clint. “Thor is on that trail, and he’s got a whole team of Asgardians with him. They know Loki well, and they’ve beaten him before.”

Natasha bumps his shoulder with her own. “And we’re on a totally different trail, with a team we can count on. We learn more about the Soldier and his methods every time he moves, and we’ll bring him in.”

Clint is silent for several minutes, and she allows the silence to be a companionable one, instead of something filled with expectation and growing heavier by the moment. They are just two people, sharing space, taking turns offering comfort and a shoulder to lean on. No expectations here.

Just friends. No need for discomfort or shame.

“I don’t _know_ that he can be saved,” Clint finally says, circling back to the question that’s been on her mind since the beginning. “It’s hard to know anything for certain. But I think he _can_ be, yes.”

Natasha swallows, allows her vulnerability to show. “Why do you think that?”

Clint shrugs, then shakes his head. “He saw me on that roof. I know it. And he didn’t see me as a threat until I shot at him. And even then, he didn’t come for me when he could have.” 

“Stark was on the way.”

“No, you didn’t see how he moved. He could have come for me before I even called it in. Could have walked the wires across the street, could have scaled the building smooth as an elevator ride to the top.” 

Clint laughs, slightly more genuine, but still bitter. “Could have used him in the circus, that’s for sure.” He turns away to pluck the carafe from its holder and returns to the table to sit. 

“But that’s not the only thing, ‘Tasha. He cares. He’s completely vicious and I’ve never seen anything like it, but he designed his collapsing building to protect some rats he was taking care of. He saved a girl in an alley when he has to have known the cops were on the way.”

“He went out of his way to kill that man in the motel when he would have been completely unseen if he’d minded his own business,” she adds as he takes a huge swig from the carafe. 

“Right,” he says. “Guy has facets, is what makes me think we can save him. Not a total lunatic out for blood. He’s picky. Choosey. Likes animals. Steals people’s pillows and fluffy towels.”

Clint gestures with the carafe, managing not to spill any of his precious coffee. “If he were single-minded like we thought at first, that’d be tougher. But… Honestly, ‘Tasha, I think the hard part here might be keeping him to ourselves once we bring him in.”

Because after all this death and mayhem, the powers that be will want someone to take a fall, and it might as well be the guy whose hand was on the knife. Best case, there’s an insanity plea and he spends the rest of what might be a very long life in an institute drugged insensate. Assuming he even has dual citizenship and they manage to avoid shipping him to Russia.

It’d be one thing if they worked something out and got him pardoned for what he’s done on the condition that he worked for the government going forward, but that’s not likely to work—he’s already turned on S.H.I.E.L.D., so why would he fail to do so a second time? 

And— 

And that’s not saving him at all. That’s just handing him back over to S.H.I.E.L.D., passing him over to STRIKE like they did the scepter, brushing off their hands and being done with it. And that’s not their style. 

It had rankled to hand the scepter over, and while Stark’s the only one who’ll say as much, none of them were really thrilled to accept the pat on the head and let others take it from there.

She doesn’t imagine they’d do things that way a second time, if they had it all to do over and the choice to make again. There’d have been even more of a scuffle over who got to deal with what, and it would have been unsightly arguing, but they’d have argued.

How much more would they argue over bustling the Soldier off to a S.H.I.E.L.D. holding unit until someone managed to break him and bring him over the hard way. She doesn’t imagine for a moment he’d be easily convinced, and he can’t have anyone like a family still around from when he first started operating. No one and nothing to hold over him but his own freedom.

“We’ll think of something,” she says, finally. “Not even Nick would want him swallowed up in the system and hidden away for the rest of time. If we can get him instead of STRIKE, we’ll hold onto him.”

Of course, Nick might want to roll him into STRIKE Delta, assuming she and Clint aren’t on their way to being disbanded and moved fulltime to the Avengers Initiative. There’s a lot of overlap, Avengers and S.H.I.E.L.D., but it’s hard to imagine any other STRIKE personnel joining the Avengers Initiative to help them bring him in.

Other S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel, though, maybe. 

They’ve already branched out and brought Wilson into the fold, and Stark is working on getting him airborne again. That will help their mobility a good deal, give them more eyes in the sky to complement Stark and Clint. And his records really are excellent.

It’s a good thing they caught up to him before he signed on a new home. It would be a shame to put him out of a home twice in a row.

Beyond Wilson, though, they need to think about who else they know in S.H.I.E.L.D. who they know they can trust. Someone they know isn’t working with STRIKE, someone who isn’t on the Soldier’s list, someone who isn’t a bastard with a whitewashed record. And preferably someone local. 

Reaching out of the fold to scoop up Sam Wilson might look odd, but the man can manage that flight gear like he was born in the clouds, according to the footage she dug up. Not a scrap of fear that he’ll fall, not a flinch of hesitation to eel out of the path of a flash round.

But pulling someone in from much further out than New York… that’ll draw attention, especially if they’re needing to transfer anyone. 

They know they can trust Carter. She’s solid, and she’s local. So local as to report directly to Nick, and so solid as to be related to one of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s founders and early directors. Knight’s up there, too, though she’s part of the West Coast crew currently. Even Coulson’s new group would be worth looking into, once they’ve recovered from their 0-8-4. 

Options. There are options for expanding their team beyond merely adding Banner back in and getting Wilson set up. But the right time to deploy those options… 

Well, no time like the present. She and Clint have a whole day before Rogers and Wilson rejoin them, preferably with Stark in tow. First to get ready and chat up a few survivors, then time to have a nice afternoon coffee with Sharon Carter, catch up on the local gossip, offer her a side job under the table.

Should be fun.

* * *

Natasha turns to catch herself in the mirror from the side. It’s a nice jacket, fits well, easy to move around in. Lightweight enough to pass even in the summer, and easily augmented with some pockets to stash a few Widow’s bites and the like. A stiletto or two. Maybe three.

Clint gives her a bored thumbs up, playing his part excellently, and then yawns into his hand. “I like this brown one better than the black,” he says.

And maybe he is serious, maybe he doesn’t care in the slightest, maybe he’s trying to say something about her past without saying anything in a civilian space… And maybe she’s reading too much into it.

The brown does look good. 

And more importantly, Monesha Fowler has just slipped out to take her break behind the shop. Excellent.

It’s a quick enough exercise to purchase the jacket—why go through the trouble of shopping as a front if you aren’t going to buy the thing that ends up working for you?—and then they’re out back as well, slipping around the side of the building. 

“Miss Fowler?” Natasha asks, showing a S.H.I.E.L.D. badge as they approach. “I was wondering if you had a few minutes to talk with us about the attack Saturday night.”

She holds out a hand. “Somewhat off the record,” she continues as Monesha takes a step forward and extends her own hand. “I know you spoke with the police, and with people from STRIKE Alpha.”

Monesha looks from her to Clint and back, tucks a stray braid back into the loose bun she’s gathered at the crown of her head, and then nods slowly. “I told them everything I knew.”

Everything she knew. Not everything she knows. If Natasha had to put her in a witness category, she’d fall squarely in the “knows something and plans to withhold it” category. Interesting.

Clint digs around in his pocket for his own S.H.I.E.L.D. badge and hands it over rather than merely showing it. “We’re with them, but we’re not _with-_ with them,” he says. “Call it a rivalry.”

“A rivalry?” She hands the badge back, narrowing brown eyes at him.

Natasha wouldn’t have taken this track, so she lets Clint run the show rather than stepping on his toes or derailing him. The man is charming in his scruffy way, so let him work. It worked on her, all those years ago.

“Yeah. A semi-friendly rivalry. See, the others, the ones you talked to? They want to find this guy and bring him in. Lock him up at _best._ ” Clint gestures toward Natasha by way of elbowing the bag with her new jacket in it. “We don’t agree. We just want to talk to him.”

Monesha frowns, but it’s more confused and less disapproving now. “He killed a man. More than one. A lot more.”

“And messily, yeah.” Clint shrugs. “We want that to stop, but we think we can talk him down, get him some help. He definitely needs it.”

“…So you need my story again?” She shifts from one foot to the other, undecided or already preparing a lie, hard to tell. “To help him?”

Clint nods. “We need anything you’ve got that can help us get to him before the other guys. Because they do _not_ have his best interests in mind, I’ll tell you that much.”

Monesha presses her lips into a line for a moment, then her jaw comes forward slightly and her stance changes to hold her head higher. 

“I don’t remember much. Just a little of what he looked like that night, and how afraid I was, and how I could hardly think and everything was so hard.” She shakes her head. “They said that was the drug he slipped me. Not the Slasher. But the other…” 

Monesha licks her lips and comes a little closer still, lowering her voice. “You’re trying to help him. Right?”

“Trying to get him help, hear him out,” Natasha says with a confirmation look at Clint. “We think we can see some of where he’s coming from, but not the full picture.”

Clint nods. “I want to talk. I want to really understand what’s going on, and get this guy the help he needs. Not a padded cell or anything. But help.”

Monesha swallows and leans forward. “I’ve seen him again. Since.”

Not at all the additional information Natasha had been expecting, and from the Clint’s stillness at her side, she can tell he’s just as surprised.

“He came to you?” Clint asks.

Monesha shakes her head. “It was just… A chance encounter. He was hungry. And in the neighborhood. I heard something outside, and I thought— I went to check it out and his dog led me to him.”

“His _dog?_ ”

“It’s a yellowish mutt. Only has one eye. Limps. I made him a sandwich, packed him some fruit and veggies. Chips. Some chicken for his dog. A tennis ball.” Monesha shrugs. “I never thought he’d— I _had_ to thank him. And you don’t thank someone by selling them out.”

There’s a hint of guilt in her tone, like she’s not quite certain she’s done the right thing and realizes how easily they can be lying to her. Time to step in.

“You haven’t sold him out, Miss Fowler,” Natasha says. “What you’re saying will help us get to him before the others do.”

“So we can actually listen to what he’s got to say, find out why he’s doing this, help him instead of just locking him up or worse,” Clint says. “Is there anything else, anything you can tell us about him? What he looks like, if you got to really see him this second time. Anything.”

She nods again. “He’s white. Blue eyes and brown hair down to his shoulders, but just brushing the tops of them. It probably gets in his eyes. He has a sharp jaw, but it looked like he’d been burned along his cheeks.”

There’s a pause, then she continues. “I think he’d gotten in a fight and lost. Or almost lost. The way his clothes were torn up in places… There was a mark on his throat. Maybe a name, maybe Roman numerals. LI.”

“And what did he say?” Natasha asks. 

“Nothing.” Monesha checks her watch. “I swear. He didn’t say anything to me. Didn’t even open his mouth. He nodded at me, though. I—” She gestures toward the building. “My break’s almost over.”

“Of course,” Clint says. “Listen, this is really going to help us help him. Thanks for spending your break out here with us.”

Natasha waves as their witness heads back inside, and then looks at Clint. She feels the corner of her mouth draw up in a half-smile at the thought of Stark doubling down on the pet shop theory. 

“He has a dog,” she murmurs to Clint.

He groans. “Stark’s going to be unbearable.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm also on [Tumblr](https://flamingo-queen-writes.tumblr.com/) if you're so inclined. ^_^

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Blue-eyed matador: the podfic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26818885) by [Homikaze](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Homikaze/pseuds/Homikaze)
  * [Dog Day](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28817970) by [theAsh0](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theAsh0/pseuds/theAsh0)




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